Latest Category: Blog Series

We’re thrilled to announce that this week HRF granted $500,000 to 14 projects worldwide as part of its Bitcoin Development Fund.

This past week, BRICS — an intergovernmental organization led by the Russian and Chinese dictatorships — explored the development of an independent payment system that aims to use digital currencies and potentially central bank digital currencies.

This week’s news focuses on the growing interest in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) from governments. Turkey concluded its initial research phase, while Ghana revealed ambitious plans to launch its own CBDC.

This week, we witnessed a rise in state-level censorship in finance and communications. Honduran regulators banned the country’s financial institutions from trading in cryptocurrency; Nigerian officials restricted access to global cryptocurrency exchanges in a desperate attempt to stabilize its currency, the Naira; and Pakistan blocked access to the X platform for eight days straight amid political unrest.

Over the last week, we mourned the murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny by Vladimir Putin’s regime.

In the past week, we’ve seen Kosovo’s ban on the Serbian currency, a cross-border CBDC transaction between regimes in the United Arab Emirates and China, Bitcoin claim all-time highs against a variety of different fiat currencies, and a long-awaited breakthrough in the Lightning Network that promises to significantly boost user privacy.

This week we continue to witness Chinese citizens using creative new methods to use bitcoin, Burmese citizens suffering from a post-coup economic crisis, and severe currency devaluation in Nigeria and Egypt, the largest countries in Africa and in the Arab world.

This past week, Egyptians were told to put up with soaring inflation, while we saw Kazakhstan’s financial suppression of journalists and Pakistan’s continued rise in Bitcoin adoption.

Today we bring you news of Chinese citizens trading cryptocurrency despite a state-imposed ban, Russia’s recent blockage of VPN services and privacy protocols ahead of next month’s presidential elections, and Venezuela’s attempt to pass legislation that takes aim at the funding of civil society organizations and human rights defenders.

This week, we delve into censorship on the Indian app stores, protests in Papua New Guinea triggered by pay cuts to the police, Ghana borrowing another $600 million from the IMF, and a new Bitcoin circular economy in Zambia.

This week, we brief you on China’s censorship of economic indicators, the freezing of bank accounts of indigenous activists in the Philippines, and the record inflation rate in Pakistan.

We start 2024 with an exciting announcement: HRF granted $500,000 to 18 projects worldwide. Our Q4 gifts focused on global education, Bitcoin Core, mining decentralization, and projects that support freedom tech developers in closed societies.

For this week’s Financial Freedom report, we cover currency devaluation in Argentina, Hong Kong’s National Police arresting individuals for donating to pro-democracy activists, and recent product launches helping make Bitcoin easy to send worldwide.

This week’s Financial Freedom report covers everything from extreme inflation under regimes in Zimbabwe and Iran to a newly exposed vulnerability allowing tyrants to track mobile phone usage of their citizens to Bitcoin software updates putting more power in the hands of users worldwide.