The Commoner
The State Wants a Seat at the AI Cap Table
OpenAI may offer the US government a stake in the company. The AI industry is moving onto wartime footing while bitcoin remains outside every cap table.
8 min read
TFTC / Marty Bent
The Commoner
Truth for the Commoner, every weekday. Money, machines, and the people trying to control both.
Marty Bent's free weekday newsletter from TFTC, since 2017. Money, markets, AI, energy, and privacy.
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1,509 posts
The Commoner
The AI War Is Being Fought at Every Layer
BPI tracks the anti-data-center ground game while Claude Code and Fable 5 show the same AI conflict at the model-access layer. Plus bitcoin probes $58k, global liquidity shifts, an…
10 min read
The Commoner
Protect Kids, Verify Everyone
The KIDS Act would push the internet toward age verification gates under the banner of protecting kids. Parents should parent. Government should stay out of building identity rails…
7 min read
The Commoner
The Debasement Trade Is Being Tested
Michael Howell says bitcoin weakness reflects a slowing liquidity impulse, not a dead debasement thesis. Plus Jay Patel, Strategy capital management, and Jordi Visser on the AI sha…
7 min read
The Commoner
The Government Has No Business Deciding Who Gets Access to GPT-5.6
OpenAI is reportedly limiting GPT-5.6 access at the US government’s request. Marty argues AI safety has become regulatory moat-building as open-weight models catch up and crush pri…
9 min read
The Commoner
Bitcoin's Selloff Is Stress-Testing the Leverage Built Around It
Bitcoin broke below $59k, stress-testing leverage around the asset while the network keeps clearing blocks. Plus DMND's first known Stratum V2 block, AI compute bottlenecks, miners…
7 min read
The Commoner
Catholic Leaders and Law Enforcement Unite Against the Crypto Industry's Most Important Bill
Catholic leaders and four major law enforcement associations oppose the CLARITY Act's BRCA provision. The bill that would have kept Samourai's developers free needs a floor vote by…
13 min read
The Commoner
Apple Is About to Kill Sparrow Wallet. Here's What It Means for Freedom Tech.
Apple is threatening to terminate Craig Raw's developer account by June 30, which would end all new Sparrow Wallet installs on macOS. Meanwhile, central banks are accumulating gold…
7 min read
The Commoner
Japan Drops a Frontier AI Model Ten Days After the U.S. Shut Down Anthropic's
Sakana AI's Fugu Ultra claims frontier parity the same week the U.S. forced Anthropic offline. Bitcoin miners pivot to AI as hashrate drops. Howell says Warsh will let markets tigh…
9 min read
The Commoner
America Built a Nuclear Reactor from Nothing in 9 Months. Ward 250 Is Now Critical.
Valar Atomics' Ward 250 achieves criticality in 9 months from empty site. Plus private credit seizing, Saylor's STRC problem, and yen carry trade risk.
9 min read
The Commoner
Midjourney's Full-Body Scanner and the Good Side of the AI Revolution
Midjourney, bootstrapped to $200M with zero investors, unveiled a full-body ultrasonic CT scanner: no radiation, no MRI, 60x faster. Plus Warsh dot plot results, Iran peace deal, a…
10 min read
The Commoner
250,000 Victims. 149 Districts. The Rape Gang Inquiry Report Drops. Starmer Has Not Said a Word.
A 219-page independent inquiry funded by 20,000 public donations estimates 250,000 victims across 40% of the UK. Grooming gangs since the 1950s. Institutional cover-up by police, s…
9 min read
The Commoner
The BOJ Just Raised Rates to a 31-Year High. Every Past Hike Crashed Bitcoin. This Time It Didn't.
The Bank of Japan raised rates to 1%, the highest since 1995. Every previous hike crashed Bitcoin 18-28%. Today BTC holds $66K. BlackRock launches BITA income ETF. Warsh chairs fir…
8 min read
The Commoner
The UK Bans Social Media for Under-16s. Bluesky Gets a Pass.
The UK just banned under-16s from Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Bluesky is reportedly exempt. The surveillance infrastructure this requires is the real sto…
10 min read
The Commoner
Belfast Is Burning. The UK Government Built the Surveillance State First.
A Sudanese man attempted a beheading in Belfast. The city erupted. The UK government's response: threaten the angry, blame the platform, and fast-track device surveillance. Signal…
7 min read
The Commoner
Dario Amodei Wants an FAA for AI. Here's What He's Really Building.
Anthropic's CEO calls for mandatory government testing of AI models and power to block deployments. Released the same day his company closed a $35 billion credit deal. Meanwhile, C…
8 min read
The Commoner
Fable 5: Most Capable AI Model Ever. And Most Deliberately Crippled
Anthropic's Fable 5 delivers superhuman coding performance while secretly sabotaging AI research tasks. Two stories that show why centralized intelligence control threatens innovat…
7 min read
The Commoner
Generational Entry. Every Bear Market Bottom Is Higher Than the Last Cycle's Top.
Every Bitcoin bear market cycle low tells the same story: the floor keeps rising. In 2015: $152. In 2019: $3,200. In 2022: $15,500. Today: panic at $60,000. Each cycle's devastatin…
9 min read
The Commoner
Zcash Orchard Vulnerability: "Three People Froze the Whole Pool"
Zcash discovered an undetectable infinite inflation bug in their Orchard privacy pool. Three people froze billions in user funds via quiet soft fork coordination with mining pools.…
8 min read
