Quantum gives off the same energy as enterprise blockchain. "My instincts tell me it's a nothing burger but my logical brain is like, even if technically it's probably a nothing burger, it's a memetic attack on Bitcoin and we need to have the memetic defense." - (jamesob)

Tech companies announced 81,747 layoffs in Q1 2026, the highest quarterly total since at least Q1 2024. That number has more than doubled from the previous quarter and is up 580% since Q4 2025. March alone accounted for 45,800 job cuts, the worst single month for tech layoffs in at least two years. The cuts keep coming. Meta is laying off roughly 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, starting May 20. Zuckerberg told staff directly that the layoffs are a consequence of the company's AI infrastructure spending, which is now guided at $125 to $145 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, nearly double what it spent in 2025. Meta also canceled 6,000 open roles and plans additional cuts in the second half of the year. Microsoft offered voluntary retirement to about 8,750 employees, roughly 7% of its U.S. workforce, with the possibility that the program transitions into layoffs if participation is low. The pattern across big tech is the same: cut headcount, redirect the savings into AI chips and data centers. Companies are converting payroll into capital expenditure. The human workforce is being downsized to fund the machine one. So far in 2026, AI has been cited as a factor in roughly 27,600 job cuts, about 13% of all announced layoffs, up from around 5% in 2025. Tracking sites show nearly 96,000 tech workers impacted across 249 layoff events this year, putting 2026 on pace to rival the mass cuts of 2023.

A Seoul court just blocked South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit from enforcing a six-month partial suspension against Bithumb, the country's largest exchange by Korean won volume. The FIU imposed the suspension in March alongside a ~$25 million fine, alleging 6.65 million violations of anti-money laundering laws. Regulators accused Bithumb of processing transfers with 18 unregistered overseas exchanges and failing to properly verify users. The suspension would have blocked new customers from depositing or withdrawing assets, effectively freezing Bithumb's growth. The court granted the stay, ruling that enforcement would cause "irreparable harm." Bithumb can continue normal operations while the case proceeds. The penalty is not canceled, just paused until a final ruling.

Berkshire Hathaway just hit a record $397 billion in cash. That's 14 co quarters of net stock sales, with another $8.1 billion sold last quarter alone. h/t (KobeissiLetter)

GameStop is preparing to make an offer for eBay, according to the Wall Street Journal, part of CEO Ryan Cohen's plan to build the company into what the Journal calls "a $100 billion-plus juggernaut." GameStop has been quietly building a stake in eBay ahead of a potential offer, which could come later this month. If eBay isn't receptive, Cohen could take the offer directly to shareholders. The size gap is notable. GameStop's market cap is around $12 billion. eBay's is roughly $46 billion. GameStop is sitting on about $9 billion in cash and $368 million in bitcoin, but how it would finance a deal nearly four times its size is unclear. GameStop shares rose about 7% after hours. eBay jumped 12%.

Jack Dorsey’s Block drops its Q1 2026 Bitcoin Proof-of-Reserves: 28,355 BTC ✅ fully verified on-chain. While most corporations hedge or play games with shareholder money, Jack keeps stacking real Bitcoin and showing the receipts publicly.

Sam Altman announced that OpenClaw now supports direct sign-in with ChatGPT accounts. Subscribers can now use their OpenAI subscription directly on the open-source AI agent.

Trump says US representatives are heading to Islamabad tomorrow for a second round of negotiations with Iran. If Iran doesn't take the deal, Trump says the US is "going to knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran." He also confirmed the US blockade has already closed the Strait of Hormuz, costing Iran $500 million a day. Many tankers are now headed to US ports in Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska instead. The ultimatum is clear. Take the deal or lose the power grid.

U.S. banks reported a combined $434 billion in net interest income for 2025, roughly $1,600 for every adult American. Many checking accounts paid depositors just 0.01% interest.

President Trump is pushing for a clean extension of FISA Section 702 through the House this week. He says he is working with Speaker Mike Johnson, Chairman Jim Jordan, and Chairman Rick Crawford to pass it without amendments.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces plans for the city’s first government-owned grocery store at La Marqueta in East Harlem, with an expected opening in 2027. The $30 million project is the first of five planned, one in each borough.

Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson published a proposal called PACTs (Provable Address-Control Timestamps). Robinson argues if quantum computing ever becomes a real threat to Bitcoin, the network may need to respond with an emergency soft fork that freezes spending from vulnerable addresses. Freezing vulnerable addresses would stop quantum attackers from draining wallets, but it would also lock out the legitimate owners. PACTs would attempt to solve this by using zero-knowledge proofs to let holders secretly timestamp their knowledge of a private key. The timestamp is generated offchain and anonymously, without revealing address ownership or moving any funds. If a freeze ever happened, a holder who generated a PACT beforehand could use it to prove they knew the private key before any quantum computer could have derived it, separating them from an attacker. Robinson says dormant Bitcoin addresses would be the most exposed under this scenario. Wallets belonging to early miners, long-term holders, and what he estimates as Satoshi Nakamoto's 1.1 million BTC haven't moved in years. Their owners may not be monitoring developments or in a position to upgrade. He frames PACTs as a preparatory measure rather than a complete solution. From his paper: adopting PACTs now "would help give holders as much time as possible to secure their coins against an emergency sunset, while allowing us to leave the more difficult decisions, including whether a sunset is necessary or desirable, until later." The catch: holders would need to generate a PACT before quantum computers arrive or before any emergency fork kicks in. Anyone who doesn't act in time would risk permanently losing access to their coins under this framework.

The Federal Reserve is asking major US banks to detail their exposure to private credit funds after a surge in investor redemptions and a rise in troubled loans across the $1.8 trillion industry. Fed examiners are incorporating the questions into routine bank oversight, specifically targeting the debt that private credit funds have taken on from banks. In good times, that leverage juices returns. In bad times, it puts bank collateral directly at risk. Treasury is running a parallel effort, questioning the insurance industry about its own private credit exposure and assembling a dedicated team to assess the risk. The timing matters. Retail-facing credit funds have come under pressure in recent months as investors rushed to pull cash. International regulators are sounding alarms too. FSB Chair Andrew Bailey warned this week that the Iran conflict is compounding stress in private credit markets. Banks and private credit are deeply intertwined despite efforts to appear otherwise. Credit funds depend on banks for custody, credit lines, and leverage. Blackstone, Blue Owl, and KKR credit funds are running debt-to-equity ratios between 0.7x and 0.8x. Jamie Dimon acknowledged the industry suffers from a lack of transparency and poor valuation standards, though he stopped short of calling it a systemic risk. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is actively pushing to loosen lending rules for banks, partly to help them lend more to these same private credit firms. Regulators are trying to map the risk at the same time policymakers are expanding it.

All four Artemis II crew members have safely exited the Orion capsule after their mission.

Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) have finalized a compromise on stablecoin yield, clearing the way for the Clarity Act to move forward in the Senate Banking Committee. The deal bans rewards offered "in a manner that is economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit." Companies could still offer rewards tied to stablecoins, but only if those rewards pass a regulatory test proving they aren't functioning like bank deposit interest. The compromise also directs regulators to develop a new stablecoin disclosure regime and define a list of permissible reward activities. Stablecoin yield has been the central holdup for the Clarity Act for months. Banks argued that stablecoins offering 5-6% yields were directly competing with traditional savings accounts outside the banking regulatory framework. Tillis says he will push for the bill to enter markup after the May recess. Separately, Tillis expressed support for Senator Cynthia Lummis' framework to protect non-custodial software developers from prosecution under 1960s-era money transmitting statutes, drawing a legal line between developers who write open-source code and entities that actually control customer funds.

Saylor: "Everything gets too big. Big government, big charity, big bank, big education, big medicine, big foreign policy, big defense. In nature when a creature gets too big it collapses under its own weight. The elephant is the limit to what nature can create." "The smaller the better. The smallest possible government. Most government intervention is iatrogenic. It cripples everything."

Rep. Thomas Massie is breaking with his party again over warrantless surveillance. Massie said on X that he votes with the GOP 91% of the time, but that's about to drop to 90% because he won't vote to let federal agencies spy on Americans without a warrant. He paired the statement with a screenshot of an email from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs pushing Congress for a clean reauthorization of FISA Section 702, which expires April 19. The Trump administration is asking for an 18-month extension with no reforms. The House is expected to vote on it next week. Section 702 lets the NSA intercept communications of foreign intelligence targets that pass through U.S. infrastructure. The controversy is what happens next, federal agencies can then search the resulting databases for information on Americans who communicated with those targets, all without a warrant. The FBI has been repeatedly cited by the FISA Court for misusing the authority to query U.S. citizens, including protesters, political donors, and a sitting member of Congress. A bipartisan group including Ron Wyden and Warren Davidson is pushing to add warrant requirements before any extension passes. The White House and former national security officials argue a lapse would create a gap adversaries could exploit. Massie remains one of the few consistent voices in Congress treating the Fourth Amendment as non-negotiable, even when it means voting against his own party and the president.

Trump issues warning to Iran over attempts to charge fees on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

CFTC Chairman Mike Selig told the ICI Leadership Summit today that free-market principles will guide the agency. He said demand for financial products will always exist and the U.S. should keep that activity in regulated domestic markets rather than push it offshore.

Bitcoin's quantum defense just got its first working prototype. Olaoluwa Olaoluwa Osuntokun Osuntokun, CTO of Lightning Labs, published a functional tool to the Bitcoin developer mailing list that solves one of the hardest problems in Bitcoin's long-term security, how to protect the network from quantum attacks without locking millions of users out of their own wallets. The problem is a painful paradox. Bitcoin's leading quantum defense proposal (BIP-360) would disable the current signature system network-wide if a quantum threat emerged. That protects the network, but every wallet that hasn't migrated to the new quantum-resistant format gets frozen permanently. The coins are still there. The rightful owner just can't access them. Osuntokun's prototype is the escape hatch. Instead of proving ownership with a digital signature, the system lets users mathematically prove they created the wallet using its original seed phrase, without ever revealing the seed itself. Recovering one wallet doesn't compromise any others derived from the same seed. It replaces "I can sign this transaction" with "I can prove this wallet came from me." It already runs on a consumer MacBook. Generating the proof takes about 55 seconds. Verification takes under two seconds. The proof file is roughly 1.7 MB. There's no formal proposal to integrate this into Bitcoin yet and no deployment timeline. But the prototype closes a gap that had only existed in theory until now, a credible path to quantum resilience without the collateral damage of stranding user funds.

Trump just told Congress the Iran war is "terminated" in a letter timed to the 60-day War Powers Resolution deadline. No exchange of fire since the April 7 ceasefire, so legally, the clock stops and no congressional authorization is needed. But U.S. troops are still deployed across the region. The Strait of Hormuz is still restricted. Iran's president is calling the U.S. naval blockade "an extension of military operations." Oil is above $126 a barrel. Gas just hit $4.39 a gallon nationally, up 27 cents in a single week. The War Powers Resolution was designed to force presidents to get congressional approval before committing the country to prolonged military conflict. Instead, every administration just finds a legal workaround. Declare the war over on paper, keep forces in place, and if hostilities resume, the 60-day clock resets from zero. Congress has forced six floor votes to limit the president's war powers in Iran. Republicans blocked all six. The war is over. Except for the part where it isn't.

Saylor: "There's gonna be an explosion in prosperity because a billion robots will do all the work and a billion cars will drive themself. Then I think you'll see a socialist wave of entitlements. Universal healthcare, universal basic income, universal housing, universal entitlements." "People worry that there won't be enough. That's not the problem. There'll be too much. Too much music, too much entertainment, too much food, too much alcohol, too much sugar, too much stimulation. Different civilizations will be distinguished by how they react to it."

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