Susie / Susie Violet is on Nostr

Bitcoin Journalist

Last Notes

2026-03-10 11:25:10 UTC

Blantyre, Malawi is where my Bitcoin journey really began, although I had no idea at the time.
Growing up, I lived in a quintessential English village and apart from a few holidays, that was largely the extent of my view of the world.
When I arrived in Blantyre in 1994, I was struck by the contrast between officials arriving in flashy cars at government buildings while outside, people were struggling and suffering. It was the first time I saw clearly how governments could enrich themselves while failing to look after their own people.
That trip stayed with me and gradually shaped how I think about power, money and the state.
More than thirty years later, learning that @nprofile…e4v9 will take place in Blantyre this year feels remarkable. It brings everything back to where my Bitcoin journey began and to the moment I first saw the problem Bitcoin ultimately addresses ... the need to separate money from the state.
https://blossom.primal.net/f6366d845995ef721ac175f3052e30c3315139a1cfd268abe2654e6ae4e55e80.mov

2026-02-10 13:37:36 UTC

"The UK is getting the balance wrong by failing to differentiate clearly between Bitcoin and other crypto assets and by not offering timely, actionable guidance."
As I highlighted to Cointelegraph, Gemini's departure from the UK is a warning sign for policymakers chasing crypto hub dreams.
Firms like Gemini are focusing on markets like the US and Singapore, where high compliance costs and limited opportunities don't outweigh the benefits.
Businesses will stay and scale here if the economics make sense. It's time for clearer rules, faster guidance, and real differentiation to make the UK competitive again.
Full article: https://cointelegraph.com/news/gemini-exit-tests-uk-crypto-hub-ambitions

2026-02-05 18:03:39 UTC

Gemini has announced it is leaving the UK, alongside exits from Europe and Australia, and is refocusing on the US and Singapore.
I discussed exactly this risk at the Financial Times Digital Assets Summit last May.
This is what happens when compliance becomes cumbersome and prohibitively expensive. Smaller companies are pushed out first. Over time large and established businesses reassess whether it makes sense to continue operating in an environment where regulatory uncertainty, cost and process complexity keep increasing.
Gemini is not a small startup, it is one of the largest regulated exchanges to have operated in the UK.
When firms of this size choose to concentrate activity in jurisdictions they view as more business friendly, it reflects how growth conditions, capital allocation, and long term viability are being weighed.
What we are seeing is business leaving the UK, reduced competition, slower growth, and fewer companies choosing to build here.
This is an important moment for policymakers and regulators to reflect on how current frameworks are affecting business confidence, competition, and growth in the UK.
https://support.gemini.com/hc/en-gb/articles/46255474469275-Gemini-closing-accounts-in-the-UK-EU-and-Australia-Everything-you-need-to-know
https://blossom.primal.net/da4c1f8ff76df741c86bc3da0688ce8017968700d2977d73acc1c0f73853440b.mov

2026-01-21 18:28:00 UTC

After 3 years at Bitcoin Policy UK, having worked as Head of Mining and Energy before becoming CEO, I'm stepping back from this role.
We've achieved so much with limited resources: delivering serious Bitcoin only policy engagement and gaining credibility with UK policymakers. We are all proud of that legacy.
However, the required funding did not materialise, so BPUK is working towards minimal maintenance mode by 31 March 2026.
All remaining funds and donations will help keep the work alive, with the rest held in Bitcoin in hope we can revive the organisation when the UK is ready.
With Bitcoin at 60% dominance and the UK a leader in finance and computer science, this should have been a clear priority. The UK still needs to move beyond its altcoin and speculation phase.
It's not over, it's just not the right time. We are still early.
Full announcement here: https://bitcoinpolicy.uk/blog-1/f/announcement-from-ceo-%E2%80%9Cbpuk-is-entering-a-consolidation-phase
Huge thanks to all our amazing volunteers, advisors, members, supporters, contributors, and everyone who's engaged constructively. The expertise and ideas are there, the real gap is resourcing principled Bitcoin voices in policy.
https://blossom.primal.net/cfcb2ee25c086c7d1fa71587d8dc0645f8a20f26c856087aceed3f9dee693f38.png

2025-12-21 11:09:05 UTC

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The UK needs Bitcoin; Bitcoin doesn’t need the UK.
Bitcoin is sound money, open infrastructure, and long term thinking built into code. It doesn’t need permission but it does reward those who pay attention.
With the right approach it can strengthen innovation, energy systems, and economic resilience.
I’ve reflected on the year in my letter to members and supporters below.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us in 2025, We are now looking forward to 2026.
Tick tock, next block.
#nevent1q…nhg9

2025-08-28 06:33:54 UTC

Energy bills are climbing again in the UK while billions are being paid out in curtailment costs. Flexible load solutions that could help stabilise the grid are being ignored.
According to the Financial Times, in the 2024–25 financial year. NESO spent £2.7 billion in total balancing costs in 2024–25, with wind curtailment a major contributor.
This curtailment happened because the grid could not handle the excess electricity.
https://ft.com/content/221d5b5d-ae51-4a6c-8516-b3b906d3ff89
Recent coverage paints a clear picture.
YahooFinance and CoinDesk report on Hut 8’s efforts to monetise energy assets, showing how miners are aligning with the energy sector to provide stability and unlock new revenue streams.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hut-8-maps-path-monetization-131011324.html
https://coindesk.com/markets/2025/08/27/hut-8-maps-path-to-monetization-of-energy-assets-as-bitcoin-mining-carve-out-nears-benchmark
Our UK briefing paper at @nprofile…r55r shows exactly how Bitcoin mining could do the same here.
Flexible load can absorb excess renewable generation, reduce curtailment costs, and lower bills for households and businesses.
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/aea8e937-fd18-400f-afd9-c3513112c757/downloads/d3850229-208c-4385-9b86-2e82fd55cc6c/UK%20Power%20Grid%20Bitcoin%20Mining%20as%20a%20Demand%20Side%20.pdf
The UK energy crisis is not going away. It is time to stop ignoring solutions that are already working elsewhere.
H/t to Progressive Bitcoin UK for today’s newspaper headlines.
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2025-08-01 08:47:50 UTC

When did criticising policy make you a target of the state?
Why is a secret government unit policing public opinion?
What exactly is happening behind the scenes in government?
A secretive government unit, empowered by the Online Safety Act, is quietly flagging and suppressing online criticism of immigration policy. It operates behind closed doors. It is unelected. It is unaccountable. And it is being used to control the narrative under the guise of safety.
A front page Telegraph exposé, titled "Exposed: Labour’s plot to silence migrant hotel critics"reveals disturbing details .
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/31/exposed-labour-plot-silence-migrant-hotel-critics/
The article uncovers that a secretive Whitehall unit called NSOIT (the National Security and Online Information Team), formerly known as the Counter Disinformation Unit, has been used by Labour ministers in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to flag and monitor social media posts that criticised migrant hotels, asylum seekers, or raised concerns about “two-tier policing.”
According to internal government emails dated August 3 - 4, 2024, during the peak of the Southport riots, officials actively flagged posts with “concerning narratives,” warning that they might inflame public tensions. These posts were then forwarded to platforms like TikTok, many of them labelled as urgent, despite simply reporting factual information such as hotel locations or referring to asylum seekers as “undocumented fighting-age males”.
One flagged example involved a user sharing a Freedom of Information (FOI) rejection letter regarding migrant hotel sites. Another was a video captioned “Looks like Islamabad but it’s Manchester,” flagged for fuelling racial stereotypes, yet still not unlawful under current speech laws.
Although the government insists it did not request content removals, civil liberties advocates, including Big Brother Watch and the Free Speech Union, argue that this behaviour amounts to censorship of lawful dissent, carried out by unelected officials with no statutory oversight, using the infrastructure created by the Online Safety Act.
This has the fingerprints of the 77th Brigade all over it, covert monitoring, narrative control, and a quiet war on the public's right to speak freely.
This is not safety. It’s censorship and control.

2025-07-17 17:57:08 UTC

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It’s a genuine concern. Evolution doesn’t guarantee immunity. Old incentives have a habit of resurfacing, especially when profit and power are at stake.

2025-07-02 07:32:50 UTC

Big Brother Watch has repeatedly warned that the UK is quietly creeping into a surveillance state. Live facial recognition is being deployed across streets, train stations, shopping centres and even at public protests. But this technology is not just targeting criminals. It is scanning millions of innocent people without their knowledge or consent.
False alarms with real consequences
Studies show that the vast majority of facial recognition matches are false. According to Big Brother Watch, in 80 deployments across the UK, 89.7% of alerts were false positives. In London alone, 150 out of 173 matches by the Metropolitan Police were incorrect, resulting in an error rate of nearly 87%. In some cases, people were stopped, searched or fingerprinted as a result.
These mistakes are not harmless. They are invasive, humiliating and difficult to challenge.
https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Biometric-Britain.pdf
It is all connected
Facial images from passports, CCTV, phones and even social media are increasingly fed into large government and private databases. Big Brother Watch has raised concerns that a digital pound or central bank digital currency would allow the state to track every payment in real time. Combined with facial recognition and phone surveillance, this creates a fullmap of your movements, your spending and your associations.
Your phone is not private
Every step we take with a smartphone in our pocket feeds data to corporations and authorities. Location, biometrics, browsing history and more. If that is tied to payment systems and real time identity scanning, we move closer to a system where everything we do can be watched, recorded and judged.
Know Your Customer (KYC) rules are already mandating identity checks for basic services. This is not theoretical. It is happening now.
Where does this lead?
The future we are heading toward is one of forced compliance. A world in which you are monitored constantly. In which you are guilty until proven innocent. In which dissent is quietly suppressed by the knowledge that you are being watched.
We are at a turning point
If we do not push back, we risk building a society where privacy is gone, autonomy is restricted, and control is centralised in the name of convenience and safety. This goes far beyond retail surveillance. It marks the steady build up of a digital infrastructure designed for monitoring and control.
It's 1984
George Orwell warned of a future where every move was watched, every word monitored, and every thought shaped by fear. But even he did not imagine a world where your money could be used to control you.
With facial recognition and CBDCs combined, we are building something even more invasive than Orwell foresaw, a system where surveillance is not just constant but transactional, embedded into the very fabric of daily life.
When every face is scanned, every step tracked, and every payment recorded, we are not living freely. We are living under watch.
Thank you to Big Brother Watch for continuing to shine a light on these issues and holding power to account.

2025-06-28 07:24:50 UTC

I love ₿itcoin. 🧡

2024-11-24 11:22:05 UTC

The new Crypto Asset Reporting Framework may signal ChokePoint 3.0, raising concerns over privacy, data security, reporting accuracy, and the potential for wrongful assessments due to incomplete or misinterpreted information.
My latest in Forbes.
#Bitcoin
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/11/24/bitcoin-privacy-at-risk-could-carf-regulations-signal-chokepoint-30/

2024-09-22 09:45:07 UTC

Following up with BBC.
Evidence previously overlooked has been resubmitted, and further research will be provided in collaboration with the Digital Assets Research Institute to push for a necessary retraction.
I have requested that the case remain open.
#note15yy…pj7c
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2024-09-20 09:52:30 UTC

I've had a response from the BBC, and they're doubling down, further proving how difficult it is to hold the BBC accountable for their misinformation.
Here’s a short summary on their response:
Flawed Metrics: The BBC relies on Alex de Vries' debunked "per transaction" metric to assess Bitcoin's environmental impact, despite Cambridge University disproving this methodology as early as 2018. The BBC ignored credible research that highlights the fundamental flaws in de Vries' study, failing to fact-check before publishing.
https://x.com/DecentraSuze/status/1834671256299257876
Misleading Headline: The BBC admitted to using "payment" and "transaction" interchangeably in their headline, allegedly to make it more accessible to readers. However, this distinction is critical—confusing the two leads to gross overestimation of Bitcoin's water use by a factor of 1000x or more. This misrepresentation is not a small error; it's misinformation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67564205
Undisclosed Conflict of Interest: De Vries works for the Dutch Central Bank, which has a vested interest in discrediting Bitcoin, yet the BBC did not disclose this conflict. Central banks stand to lose from decentralised finance systems, making de Vries’ affiliation highly relevant and worth disclosing. The BBC dismissed this concern outright.
Impartiality in Question: Despite claiming impartiality, the BBC consistently fails to provide balanced reporting on Bitcoin. This article is just one of many examples, amplifying flawed studies while ignoring counter-evidence and perpetuating a one-sided narrative.
https://x.com/gladstein/status/1803507915556606200
Broken Complaint Process: Beyond the article’s provable flaws, which have been dismissed by the editorial complaints team, I can’t even respond to the email I received. The BBC’s process forces me to deliver responses over the phone, making it more difficult to address these serious issues. Accountability feels impossible.
https://x.com/DecentraSuze/status/1834669804923322843
This isn’t just about bitcoin. It’s about journalistic standards and the integrity of the information that the public relies on. We need to demand better fact-checking, transparency, and accountability from organisations like the BBC.
The links they have provided in support of their response are provided below:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137268
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949790623000046
https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2024-07/ESMA75-453128700-1229_Final_Report_MiCA_CP2.pdf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines
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