Financial Freedom Report #143
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- GLOBAL NEWS
- RECOMMENDED CONTENT
- BITCOIN AND FREEDOM TECH NEWS
- BITCOIN RECOMMENDED CONTENT
Welcome back to the Financial Freedom Report
In Russia, the regime will ban peer-to-peer (P2P) digital asset trading between individuals starting July 1, 2027. After that date, Russians will still be “legally” allowed to buy and sell digital assets, including bitcoin, but only through state-regulated intermediaries.
In Bitcoin and freedom tech news, Exonumia, an open-source project that translates Bitcoin educational content into African languages, launched a community-built glossary that translates hundreds of Bitcoin, Lightning, and mobile-money terms into African languages to help developers build safer, more accessible tools for local users.
In recommended content, economist Rabah Arezki argues in the Journal of Democracy that digital finance could prove to be a more durable “liberation technology” than social media and the internet did against the modern state. We then consider what that argument means when applied to Bitcoin.
Now, let’s get into the details.
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GLOBAL NEWS
Russia | Central Bank to Ban Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Trades
Russia’s central bank will ban P2P digital asset trading between individuals starting July 1, 2027. After that date, Russians will be “legally” allowed to buy and sell digital assets, including bitcoin, only through state-regulated intermediaries. The central bank has already created a registry of nine approved institutions, including state-linked banks VTB and Sberbank. From that same date, individuals will be barred from transferring digital assets held with intermediaries to self-custodial wallets, meaning bitcoin acquired through an “approved” institution must remain within the state-regulated financial system. The roughly 98% of investors the central bank classifies as “non-qualified” must also first pass a knowledge test and may purchase no more than 300,000 rubles (about $3,690) in digital assets per year through each approved intermediary. Even then, their choices are limited to three assets: bitcoin, ether, and USDT.
In context: P2P trading is at the core of Bitcoin’s promise. Two people exchanging value without asking permission is financial freedom in practice. Russia’s ban is attempting to confine bitcoin activity to state-approved intermediaries and systems. Even so, bitcoin has historically persisted through informal channels, and there is little reason to expect July 2027 to change that.
Burma | Regime Borrows 2.1 Trillion Kyats as Currency Slides
Burma’s military junta received approval to borrow up to 2.1 trillion kyats from the Central Bank to cover its 2026–2027 budget deficit. This adds to nearly 14 trillion kyats the regime already raised through treasury bills and bond auctions. The kyat weakened again following the decision, with the dollar rising to around 4,670 kyats on the parallel market, compared with the regime’s official fixed rate of 2,100. Before the 2021 military coup, the currency traded below 1,300 kyats per dollar.
Why this matters: The regime is financing growing budget shortfalls while ordinary people absorb the cost through a weaker currency and higher prices. At the same time, officials are forcing migrant workers to send at least 25% of their salaries home at the official exchange rate. At 2,100 kyats per dollar versus roughly 4,670 on the street, those workers receive less than half the market value of their labor, with the shortfall entirely lost to a rigged forex system.
Turkey | Regime Escalates Censorship as Investment Fund Crisis Widens
As Turkey’s investment fund investigation widens, the regime is escalating censorship. In September alone, officials ordered at least 1,270 X accounts with a combined 35 million followers to be blocked, according to a joint statement by Human Rights Watch. The targets include the independent news outlet T24, rights groups such as Amnesty Türkiye and MLSA, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights organizations, and even the İFÖD account that monitors Turkish censorship. More than 340 finance-related accounts, including those of economists, traders, journalists, and lawyers, were blocked for discussing the recent financial woes, and courts have ordered the liquidation of 131 funds holding roughly $20 billion, affecting nearly half a million investors. Meanwhile, officials have frozen 214 accounts tied to the collapsed funds and imposed travel bans on those involved. The incident has exposed how Turkey’s modern authoritarian regime responds to financial crises.
Morocco | Central Bank Signs CBDC Agreement with UAE
The central banks of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have agreed to exchange expertise on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), including their possible use for cross-border payments. The UAE has already established a digital dirham platform, completed a pilot, and made payments to China via the CBDC network mBridge. Meanwhile, Morocco’s CBDC, e-dirham, is in the late stages of research. The memoranda of understanding also include linking payment systems and sharing supervisory data on banks operating in both countries. The UAE is the largest Arab investor in Morocco (more than $30 billion), and both regimes aim to double their trade and investments by 2030.
In context: Morocco and the UAE, two fully authoritarian regimes according to HRF’s Tyranny Tracker, have historically relied on surveillance and financial repression to target dissidents. The UAE, for instance, has frozen the bank accounts of imprisoned activists’ relatives and, in 2021, confiscated the assets of four exiled dissidents after accusing them of supporting terrorism. Working together, the two central banks could accelerate the adoption of CBDCs, under which citizens would have almost no financial privacy left to lose.
RECOMMENDED CONTENT
The Real Liberation Technology by Rabah Arezki
In a new Journal of Democracy essay, economist Rabah Arezki revisits “liberation technology”: the idea that the internet, mobile phones, and social media would give individuals an enduring advantage over authoritarian regimes. But, he argues, this thesis largely underestimated the modern state. Regimes frequently censor online platforms, surveil users, control information, and shut down connectivity when political pressure becomes threatening. Arezki makes the case that digital finance could prove a more durable liberation technology, because governments have stronger incentives to let it operate and grow.
Our view: Arezki’s argument raises an obvious question for Bitcoin. Most of the payment systems he examines still depend on banks, telecom companies, or state-linked infrastructure that regimes can ultimately monitor, restrict, or switch off. What happens when people gain access to money and financial infrastructure that no single government, company, or individual controls?
BITCOIN AND FREEDOM TECH NEWS
Exonumia | Bitcoin Glossary Brings Technical Terms into African Languages
Exonumia, a past HRF grantee and open-source project that translates Bitcoin education into African languages, released Bitcoin Glossary, a new resource designed to help developers localize Bitcoin, Lightning, and mobile money products for African users. The glossary currently includes 359 terms across 14 categories, with translations in Gĩkũyũ, Kiswahili, Soomaali, and more. Rather than relying on literal translations, native speakers propose, review, and agree on terminology for concepts such as “wallet,” “seed phrase,” and “self-custody,” with Bitcoin contributors helping preserve technical accuracy. Explore the glossary here.
Why this matters: Many core Bitcoin concepts do not translate cleanly into other languages, and confusing terminology around recovery phrases, private keys, or self-custody can create real security risks. Exonumia gives wallet developers, educators, and support teams a shared vocabulary for building products that make sense in the languages people actually use. This lowers one of the less visible barriers to Bitcoin adoption across Africa, and should aid in the creation of localized freedom tech tools.
Rurbit | Bitcoin Off-Ramp Expands Through Burundi’s Mobile Banking Network
Rurbit, a Bitcoin service built for Burundians using basic mobile phones, has added IBBM+, the mobile banking service of Interbank Burundi, as a new off-ramp. Rurbit uses the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a mobile communications system similar to SMS that enables offline transactions. With Rurbit, while a centralized solution, users can send bitcoin over Lightning to an IBBM+ account, then withdraw cash from an IBBM+ agent, all from the same USSD menu, no internet needed.
Why this matters: Internet use in Burundi stands at about 11% of the population but 8.7 million Burundians have mobile phones (equivalent to more than 60% of the population). Offline access is what makes bitcoin accessible in this context, because freedom money is only useful if it actually reaches the people who need it.
Liquid | LBTC-Bitcoin Swaps Restored Six Weeks After Exploit
Converting Liquid Bitcoin back into bitcoin works at full service again, six weeks after a software bug broke the sidechain’s backing, according to Blockstream CEO Adam Back. On Sept. 6, a flaw in Elements, the software Liquid runs on, let an attacker create roughly 4,000 unbacked L-BTC and swap them out for about $320 million in real bitcoin. Actors identifying themselves as white hats returned 3,400 BTC the next day, leaving the reserve that backs L-BTC at roughly 86% coverage, and the federation suspended peg-outs until the shortfall could be closed. Under a staged recovery announced Oct. 20, swap providers such as SideSwap are once again converting L-BTC to bitcoin one-to-one, with a standard 0.1% fee, and Aqua offers L-BTC-to-Lightning swaps. The final stage, full one-to-one backing, has not arrived yet. Until it does, L-BTC holders are still trusting the federation’s promise.
Divine | Nostr-Based Social App Named a TIME Best Invention
Divine, an open-source social video app built on Nostr, was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2026. Created by Rabble, one of Twitter’s original employees, Divine revives Vine’s six-second video format and includes more than 2.5 million archived Vine videos from the original platform. Divine is built on Nostr, an open protocol that lets a user control their own cryptographic identity and carry it between compatible apps rather than tying their account to a single company. It points toward a future where people can have a portable and verifiable login across Nostr apps on the Internet.
Why this matters: On centralized online platforms, losing an account can mean losing years of followers and distribution overnight. Nostr makes that relationship more portable: Activists and dissidents can move between compatible apps while keeping the same identity and social graph. Rabble presented Divine at HRF’s Global Freedom Tech Summit, where he demonstrated how Nostr functions beyond social media and actually provides the foundational layer for a more decentralized internet.
Cashu | Proposed Federated Ecash Model Removes Single-Operator Risk
Calle, the freedom tech developer behind the Cashu ecash protocol, has introduced Federated Cashu, an extension of the open-source protocol that removes single-operator custody risks. The design remains at the specification stage: no federated mint is live, and there is no beta for users to try yet. But here’s how it works: with Cashu, users deposit bitcoin at a mint and receive digital tokens they can spend like cash. Until now, however, each mint has been run by a single operator. The proposed design divides custody among five operators, any four of whom can keep the mint going. Tokens are issued by operators, but none can see who is spending what. Users must still trust that the operators will not collude to walk away with their funds. The upgrade moves Cashu closer to Fedimint, another open-source implementation of ecash in which a group of guardians jointly holds a community’s bitcoin.
bitcoin++ | Privacy Edition Comes to Seoul
bitcoin++, the leading Bitcoin developer conference series, is coming to Seoul, South Korea, for its first Korean edition on Nov. 5–6. This iteration of bitcoin++ aims to improve privacy on bitcoin. Software developers will convene to work on CoinJoin, Silent Payments, ecash, private wallets, CISA, and other technologies designed to make Bitcoin transactions harder for dictators to trace. The two-day event will feature 29 speakers alongside a privacy-focused hackathon with 2.5 million sats in prizes. The event will take place just before the Bitcoin Korea Conference.
Why this matters: Bitcoin is unstoppable, but its transactions are still public. When not used carefully, it can create risks for activists, nonprofits, and dissidents operating under financial surveillance or dictatorships. bitcoin++ is giving developers worldwide a place to test, critique, and improve the privacy tools that can reduce those risks before they reach human rights defenders and everyday users.
BITCOIN RECOMMENDED CONTENT
The Only Way to Make Your Bitcoin Truly Private with BTC Sessions
In a new tutorial, Freedom Tech educator Ben Perrin explains how to use Wasabi Wallet, an open-source Bitcoin wallet built around privacy. It focuses on CoinJoin, a technique that combines inputs from multiple users into a single Bitcoin transaction with multiple outputs, making it harder to determine which input corresponds to which output. The broader lesson for human rights defenders is that Bitcoin privacy depends not only on the wallet someone uses, but also on how coins are received, combined, stored, and later spent. Watch the tutorial here.
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