Welcome back to the Financial Freedom Report.
In Russia, organizers of an international youth festival reportedly created multiple versions of the internet, including an unrestricted network for foreign visitors and a censored one for Russian citizens. Foreign guests also received special SIM cards to access blocked platforms and the wider web, exposing how selectively Putin’s dictatorship applies its censorship and information controls to its own citizens.
In financial news, digital banking platform Revolut disclosed sensitive records belonging to nearly 700 customers after an unauthorized third party used an email account on a legitimate government agency domain to submit fraudulent information requests. The leaked data included identity and full transaction histories, including Bitcoin activity. The case is a strong illustration of the risks of mandating extensive personal information to use a platform. Doing so creates repositories of highly sensitive information that can be hacked or leaked, to the detriment of end users.
We include a TED Talk from Venezuelan opposition leader and World Liberty Congress co-founder Leopoldo López, who makes the case that technology can protect freedom by reducing dependence on gatekeepers.
Now, let’s explore these trends in further detail.
Global News
Russia
Festival Provides Foreigners with Unfiltered Internet While Censoring Russians
At the International Youth Festival in Yekaterinburg, Russian organizers ran separate Wi-Fi networks: unrestricted access for foreign delegates, state-censored access for Russians, and a network for speakers with unknown settings, according to Meduza. Entry to the open network was tied to accreditation badges, which automatically barred Russian citizens from accessing the unfiltered internet. Foreign guests also received SIM cards that bypassed regime blocks on broader mobile networks. In a crowd of roughly 10,000 attendees from 191 countries, 5,000 Russian citizens encountered Roskomnadzor’s filters while their foreign peers scrolled freely.
In context: Kremlin official Sergey Kiriyenko shared that unrestricted access helps foreigners promote the festival abroad, because “there’s much more trust when people in those countries hear about Russia from their own peers.” The actions show that Russia’s dictatorship is willing to relax censorship when it serves its own messaging goals, while continuing to deny Russian citizens the same right. It’s also becoming a template. In June, foreign guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum received the same treatment. Internet controls can also become financial controls: restricting access to websites, apps, and communication networks can limit access to digital payments, savings tools, exchanges, and remittance services.
Rwanda and DRC
M23 Rebels Trap Civilians in a Financial Squeeze
Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have built what experts describe as a deeply illegal parallel administration across the territory they seized in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. As part of that, the paramilitary group is forcing civilians and businesses to help finance their insurgency. Congolese people face taxes and fees at checkpoints, in shops, on transport, and even for basic services such as water, electricity, land records, and vehicle documents. In some areas, people are also being compelled to contribute cash, labor, goods, or part of their harvest. At the same time, the Congolese regime has shut formal banks in rebel-held areas, cutting people off from their savings and financial services. M23 has sought to replace the incumbent financial system with its own institutions, but its revived state bank, CADECO, lacks SWIFT access, and its new financial regulator, AREFA, cannot issue Congolese francs.
In context: UN experts estimate that M23 collects roughly $800,000 per month from coltan levies alone (nearly $10 million a year), and rebels looted an estimated $70 million in gold from a single mine in South Kivu. When the state and insurgents both treat money as a point of control and repression, the formal financial system disappears, leaving fewer ways to save, earn, trade, or access cash.
Cuba
Foreign Currency Restrictions Eased and New Banknotes Issued
The Communist Party of Cuba is easing foreign currency restrictions across the private economy. Private businesses, cooperatives, and agricultural producers may now accept cash payments in foreign currency “at the customer’s discretion” and deposit them into foreign-currency accounts, according to Havana Times. At the same time, the Central Bank has introduced new 10,000- and 20,000-peso banknotes, its largest denominations yet, after issuing new 2,000- and 5,000-peso notes earlier this year. Officials say the larger bills are needed to reflect current prices and make cash transactions easier, but the measure is only necessary because the regime has caused the devaluation of the currency by more than 94% in just a few short years.
Why this matters: Cuban officials say they want to restore the peso to the center of the monetary system, while legalizing the exits from it. And although easing restrictions on foreign currencies is good, with such tight restrictions around other financial activity, the most likely result is an amplified two-tier economy: Cubans with access to foreign currency will gain more ways to preserve purchasing power and participate in commerce, while those earning only pesos remain exposed to a currency that is collapsing.
India
Cash Use Grows in Tandem with Digital Payments
India’s digital payment boom, driven by the state-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI), has not displaced physical cash. According to the BBC, the Reserve Bank of India now has 176 billion banknotes in circulation and prints roughly 28–30 billion new notes each year, even as UPI transactions approach 1 billion per day. Economists are describing this as a “cash paradox”: digital payments are replacing cash for some everyday purchases, but people continue to hold banknotes as savings and as protection against emergencies or digital system failures. But cash itself is not immune from state control. In 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime invalidated 86% of the country’s cash by value overnight.
Why this matters: The gap between digital dependence and de-monetizable cash is where freedom tech lives: digital, but impossible to invalidate overnight. Bitcoin clears over a peer-to-peer network with no central operator, no company that can freeze an account, and no government that can de-monetize the currency. For Indians, that means savings that move like UPI but can’t be invalidated like 2016’s banknotes.
BRICS
Shelves Common Currency for Connected Payment Systems
At the 18th annual BRICS summit from Sept. 12–13 in New Delhi, Indian officials shared that there is no plan for a common currency. Instead, the BRICS economic coalition, which includes the authoritarian regimes of Iran, China, Russia, and Egypt, is focusing on linking member countries’ payment and messaging systems to allow more trade to be settled in their national currencies. According to Reuters, member states are also exploring ways to connect central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) across borders. These are digital versions of a nation’s currency that are a direct liability of the central bank.
Why this matters: Whether BRICS countries settle trade through a new common currency, their existing national currencies, or interoperable CBDCs, the fundamental question for financial freedom is the same: Who controls the money and the payment rails? The form of money may change, but as long as control rests in authoritarian hands, it can still serve as a tool for financial repression.
Recommended Content
How to Use Tech to Outsmart Dictators with Leopoldo López
In a new TED Talk, Venezuelan opposition leader and World Liberty Congress co-founder Leopoldo López argues that technology can protect freedom by reducing dependence on gatekeepers. López begins with his experience of imprisonment in Venezuela, describing the physical locks separating him from the outside world. He then broadens that idea, arguing that whenever access to money, communication, information, or technology depends on a gatekeeper, that gatekeeper can potentially deny access. His central argument is therefore not simply “technology is good,” but that technology becomes freedom-enhancing when the user, not the institution, holds the keys. Watch it here.
Bitcoin and Freedom Tech News
Revolut
Fake Government Request Exposes User Financial Activity
Revolut, a digital banking platform, says an unauthorized third party used an email account on a legitimate government agency domain to submit fraudulent requests for customer information. The company then disclosed sensitive records belonging to nearly 700 customers. The data ranged from names, addresses, and phone numbers to identity documents, verification selfies, bank statements, withdrawal records, and full transaction histories — including Bitcoin transactions. Revolut says its systems and customer funds were not compromised, and that it has blocked the email address and notified the undisclosed government agency.
Why this matters: For activists, journalists, or dissidents, exposure of this kind of information could reveal where they live, who they transact with, and how they acquire or move bitcoin to an authoritarian regime seeking to silence them.
Stratum V2
Security Review Hardens Bitcoin Mining Infrastructure
Stratum V2, a Bitcoin mining protocol designed to decentralize mining by letting individual miners create their own block templates, has released version 1.12.0, a major security-focused update. The new version strengthens several parts of the software and improves the stability of the Job Declaration Protocol, a feature that lets miners propose their own block templates instead of relying entirely on a pool operator. The release follows a review by Project Loupe, a security initiative by Spiral that uses artificial intelligence to audit for vulnerabilities in Bitcoin open-source software.
Why this matters: Stratum V2 is designed to reduce the concentration of power in large mining pools by giving individual miners more control over the blocks they help produce. But decentralization only helps if the software coordinating those miners is secure. Independent reviews like Project Loupe’s can catch weaknesses before they are exploited, while helping projects build stronger security practices for the long term.
Ibis Wallet
Silent Payments, Ark, and Spark Unilateral Exits Added
Ibis Wallet, an open-source and self-custodial Bitcoin wallet for Android, released version 5.0-beta, headlined by Silent Payments support. Activists and nonprofits using the wallet can now share a single static address for donations, while every payment arrives at a fresh on-chain address. This makes it much harder for outside observers to link incoming donations to the same recipient. The update also adds Ark (via Bark), a payment layer for faster, cheaper transactions. However, funds in Ark’s off-chain outputs expire, so users must refresh their balances, or they will become custodial with the operator. The release also patches three responsibly disclosed security flaws (including one that could redirect multisig change to an attacker’s keys) with no known loss of funds. Each feature makes Bitcoin easier and more private for activists to use without giving up a path back to the base network.
Blink Wallet
Security Incident Exposes Custodial Accounts
Blink, an open-source Bitcoin wallet, temporarily paused its services on Sept. 19 after an attacker exploited a vulnerability and withdrew funds from a limited number of custodial accounts. The company says a few dozen users were affected, all have been identified, and their balances will be made whole. The company said its noncustodial wallets were never affected. Blink Wallet is the original wallet that powered Bitcoin Beach, the world’s most well-known Bitcoin circular economy, which launched in El Zonte, El Salvador, in 2019. The wallet later became popular in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, including Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda.
Why this matters: This incident shows the difference between using a wallet and actually controlling the bitcoin inside it. In custodial wallets, the company holds the private keys on your behalf, so a breach of its systems can put user funds at risk. Noncustodial balances were unaffected because users retained control of their private keys.
HRF
CBDC Tracker Adds New Data and Tyranny Ratings
HRF has updated its CBDC Tracker, an interactive tool that maps central bank digital currency development around the world. The tracker now covers 150 jurisdictions and shows how many are in each stage of CBDC development, making it easier to see the global picture at a glance. It also integrates HRF’s Tyranny Tracker, so users can immediately see whether a jurisdiction pursuing a CBDC is democratic, hybrid authoritarian, or fully authoritarian. HRF has also renamed the CBDC’s former “pilot” category to “experiment” to distinguish limited tests from systems that real people are already using, and launched a news tab for CBDC updates, explainers, and interviews.
Why this matters: CBDCs are often presented as neutral payment upgrades, but who controls the system matters. By placing CBDC development alongside each jurisdiction’s political system, the tracker makes it easier to see where state-controlled digital money is advancing fastest — and where new payment infrastructure could give governments greater ability to monitor, restrict, or condition how individuals and civil society use money.
Btrust
Bitcoin Developer Grants Expanded to Brazil and India
Btrust has expanded its long-term developer grant program beyond Africa, awarding new grants to three Bitcoin open-source contributors in Brazil and India. One of the grantees, Brazilian developer plebhash, will continue maintaining Stratum V2. Leonardo Souza will continue maintaining the Bitcoin Dev Kit. And in India, software developer Ansh Sharma will work full-time on Braidpool. Btrust also announced its full Q3 cohort, supporting ten developers across Africa, Brazil, and India working on Bitcoin Core, Lightning, mining, wallets, and private payments. Read the announcement here.
Why this matters: Btrust’s grants support software developers in underrepresented regions, providing the financial stability they need to contribute to freedom tech infrastructure from anywhere. Spreading technical knowledge and maintenance across more countries makes Bitcoin development and the broader protocol less concentrated and more resilient.
Bitcoin Recommended Content
The Many Headaches of CoinJoin by Yuval Kogman
In a new essay for Spiral, Bitcoin developer Yuval Kogman examines why using CoinJoin, a Bitcoin privacy tool, is more complicated than it may appear. CoinJoin works by combining inputs from multiple users into a single Bitcoin transaction that creates multiple outputs, making it harder to determine which input corresponds to which output. But Kogman argues that real-world observers, such as authoritarian regimes with vast resources, can also study how the coins are spent later, combine multiple transactions, use wallet-clustering techniques, or incorporate external information such as know-your-customer records and leaked personal data to narrow down who owns what. Read it here.
