Financial Freedom Report #99

By HRF in bitcoin — Nov 27, 2025

Today, we reflect on the financial repression so many face around the world, and how brave and creative minds are pushing back.

In Belarus, a new decree signed by authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko expands law enforcement’s power to freeze financial transactions, deepening the regime’s intrusion into people’s private financial lives.

In freedom tech news, Blue Wallet has reimplemented Lightning Network support using Arkade. This innovation strengthens access to fast, low-cost, self-custodial payments for users in repressive regimes worldwide.

We close with a new tutorial from BTC Sessions, who released a 15-minute crash course on Sparrow Wallet, a capable tool for secure, permissionless Bitcoin self-custody.

With that, let’s turn to this week’s developments.

SUBSCRIBE HERE

GLOBAL NEWS

Belarus | Law Enforcement Empowered to Block Financial Transactions

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko signed a new decree granting law enforcement agencies broader authority to freeze financial transactions. The new rules increase information sharing between payment service providers and law enforcement agencies for drug-related investigations. The Investigative Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs can now directly suspend any financial transactions for up to 10 days if they suspect they are connected to drug-related offenses. The decree amends an earlier law that enabled several government agencies to freeze bank accounts, deposits, and e-wallets for up to 10 days for unlawful activity. The amendments further solidify the regime’s ability to surveil and restrict everyday financial activity, a mechanism Belarus has repeatedly used to target activists, journalists, and civil society organizations.

Tunisia | Financial Repression of Human Rights Organizations

Tunisian officials have intensified their crackdown on civil society, targeting human rights and refugee support organizations with an escalating mix of asset freezes, banking restrictions, and legal orders to suspend their operations. Banks have delayed or blocked foreign funding, closed accounts without explanation, and demanded onerous documentation for financial transfers that have led to months-long payment delays. These financial choke points have forced organizations to shut down core services, including women’s shelters, support centers for refugees and asylum seekers, and hotlines for survivors of domestic violence. Using financial repression, Tunisian officials have quietly but effectively weakened civil society groups providing vital services.

United Arab Emirates | New Law Passed to Regulate Self-Custody Tools

A sweeping overhaul of the UAE’s financial regulatory framework has potentially placed many Bitcoin and self-custody tools under aggressive controls. The new decree expands the definition of surveilled financial activities to include digital assets, introduces stricter licensing requirements, and creates criminal penalties for unreported financial services. The law now requires prior authorization for “offering, issuing, or facilitating” a licensed financial activity directly or indirectly. Open and permissionless technologies such as self-custodial wallets or privacy tools may fall within its scope.

In Context: Paired with threats of imprisonment and potential massive fines, the decree discourages innovation and restricts access to open financial tools. In practice, it undermines financial privacy and autonomy, as well as the ability of civil society to transact freely.

Venezuela | Hyperinflation and Growing Digital Asset Use

Venezuelans are bracing for hyperinflation as the bolívar rapidly loses value. The country’s central bank stopped publishing inflation data last year after Nicolás Maduro fraudulently claimed victory in the 2024 elections. International institutions project 548 percent inflation in 2025 and 629 percent in 2026, while some economists warn the rate could exceed 800 percent. Inside the country, the detentions of economists and a former finance minister have left few willing to challenge the regime’s official narrative. At the same time, major retailers are increasingly accepting digital assets for payment. The head of the country’s National Association of Supermarkets, Italo Atencio, projected that digital assets will account for 10 percent of all grocery transactions by early 2026.

Kenya | Government Used Social Media to Suppress Protests

A new Amnesty International report documents how Kenyan officials systematically deployed technology-facilitated violence to suppress youth-led protests against corruption and new tax hikes. Over the past year, officials and state-aligned actors launched coordinated online harassment, smear campaigns, and surveillance targeting Gen Z organizers. Amnesty documented deaths, arrests, and enforced disappearances of protesters, with many incidents following online threats or state-sponsored trolling designed to justify police action.

BITCOIN AND FREEDOM TECH NEWS

Blue Wallet | Lightning Network Support Added via Arkade

Blue Wallet, an open-source and self-custodial Bitcoin wallet, re-implemented support for the Lightning Network using Arkade, a programmable execution layer for Bitcoin. The Lightning Network is a fast and low-cost payment layer built on Bitcoin and designed for everyday transactions. Its reintroduction signals progress for access to self-custodial Lightning tools.

Why this matters: With this integration, Blue Wallet users can use more accessible Bitcoin payments, making donations, cross-border transactions, and peer-to-peer payments harder to stop in authoritarian contexts.

Bitcoin | Home Miner Finds Solo Block

A home miner running a Bitaxe Gamma (a small, open-source Bitcoin mining device) successfully mined a solo bitcoin block (block 924,569) and earned 3.146 BTC plus transaction fees. A solo bitcoin block is when an individual miner discovers a valid block on their own and receives the full block reward, a statistically rare outcome given today’s network difficulty. The miner was contributing less than seven terahashes per second in total, making the win an unlikely but powerful demonstration of accessible, open-source mining hardware like Bitaxe, which enables individuals in authoritarian regimes to participate in mining without relying on centralized Bitcoin mining pools.

Why this matters: As more people experiment with tools like Bitaxe, Bitcoin’s mining landscape becomes more distributed, resilient, and resistant to capture by authoritarian governments, ensuring it remains a means of financial freedom for civil society.

BULL Wallet | Support for Krux Added

BULL Wallet, an open-source, self-custody Bitcoin wallet, added native support for Krux, the community-built firmware that turns generic computing devices into fully stateless, air-gapped signing devices for bitcoin self-custody. With this integration, users can pair BULL Wallet with inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware to create their own secure Bitcoin signers.

Why this matters: Most users in authoritarian regimes cannot purchase top-of-the-line hardware devices, so the ability to create one’s own using widely available parts is critical.

bitcoin++ | Upcoming Sovereign Edition

From Dec. 15 to 17, open-source developers will gather in Taipei, Taiwan, for the next edition of bitcoin++, a three-day conference dedicated to the frontier of Bitcoin development. This edition's theme, “standing sovereign,” emphasizes peer-to-peer exchange, self-custody, and tools that allow individuals to transact freely without intermediaries. The event offers a hands-on space for developers, educators, and activists to deepen their understanding of how sovereignty-focused tools can expand financial freedom worldwide, and will focus on bringing in developers from authoritarian regimes across Asia.

Nut November | Cashu Ecash Hackathon

Nut November, a month-long, community-driven hackathon on the Cashu ecash protocol, has returned with a 1.48 million satoshi prize pool and an open invitation to developers worldwide. Throughout the month, freedom tech developers have been building and shipping new ecash tools, mints, apps, and infrastructure improvements. If you’re a builder, there’s still time to participate, contribute, and submit projects for a software ecosystem that provides privacy-preserving digital cash to dissidents worldwide.

Why this matters: Events like this help expand the Cashu ecosystem, inspire new protocols and applications, and lower barriers for payments with privacy protections that vastly exceed what is available through traditional Bitcoin or even Lightning networks.