Fedi ships direct payments from Stable Balance, sidestepping regulatory walls
Fedi v26.1.0 eliminates a friction point for non-technical users: direct payments from ecash without converting to Bitcoin first, positioning federated custody as the post-MiCA alternative to vanishing custodial wallets.
Fedimint v0.11 ships gateway recovery via mnemonic
Fedimint released v0.11 'Mint Condition' on April 21, 2026, adding mnemonic-based gateway recovery—the first real backup story for Lightning-connected ecash federations, directly addressing operator risk.
Bitcoin Core v31.0 Ships Mandatory Tor Privacy by Default
Bitcoin Core v31.0 released April 15, 2026, makes Tor/I2P broadcast mandatory by default for node operators, the most significant privacy default change in years, while shipping a redesigned cluster mempool and embedded ASMap data.
Fedimint v0.11 ships NAT traversal, unlocking home mint deployment
Fedimint v0.11.0-beta.1 integrates Iroh networking to let guardians run community Bitcoin mints behind firewalls without port forwarding, making one-click deployment on Start9 and Umbrel possible for non-technical operators.
HRF Distributes 1.5B Satoshis Across 26 Freedom Tech Projects
Human Rights Foundation's largest Bitcoin Development Fund round ever — 1.5 billion satoshis to 26 grantees — funds privacy infrastructure, remittance bridges, and activist networks across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
California's 90,000 Prisoners Locked Into Surveillance Duopoly With No Exit
A new arXiv paper and live California prison crisis expose how incarcerated users face compulsory surveillance technology, hidden fees, and zero self-custody — the inverse of everything Freedom Tech stands for.
Core Lightning v26.04 RC2: Splicing Graduates to Production
Core Lightning v26.04 RC2 promotes splicing from experimental to stable user-facing commands, enabling channel resizing without downtime. This moves Lightning toward true 'one-balance' wallets and cuts transaction costs in half.
BPI, Fedi, Cornell Launch First Empirical Study of Financial Privacy Behavior
The Bitcoin Policy Institute, Fedi, and Cornell University's Tech Policy Institute are publishing the first of four semi-annual reports on how Americans perceive financial privacy and how regulation shapes developer behavior, with Report 1 due April 2026.