Year End Round Up 2024

And a Q4 newsletter, of a kind

As 2024 ends, we look ahead to 2025. With a new pro-bitcoin US administration, nations advancing bitcoin strategies, and state-backed mining rising, bitcoin is driving global economic strategies. Thank you for supporting Bitcoin Policy UK. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A warning - this is a long one (though it’s mainly pictures). In case you don’t make it to the bottom, we wanted to offer you all, our supporters, our very heartfelt thanks. We’re all still volunteers at BPUK, and we literally could not do any of this work without your generous support. So thank you all - it’s very much appreciated by all the team.

This is a summary of the full year - and also our Q4 Newsletter at the same time. Apologies to all our supporters for the delay in newsletter publications; but we hope that this synopsis will show why publication has been slow!

We kickstarted the year by going through as many of the new onboarding flows for UK exchanges (mandated by the FCA) as we could. Walkthroughs were uploaded to X/Twitter for UK Bitcoiners to follow.

Ahead of what we (correctly) thought to be likely approvals of Bitcoin ETF products in the US, we had worked with Jacobi Asset Management to conduct a deep dive into their own ETF product, and wrote an open letter to the City Minister highlighting the absurdity in the fact that this could not be offered to UK retail buyers.

Also in January, we attended the UK Cryptoasset Business council in Parliament and spoke directly to the City Minister on the previous government’s Bitcoin policy

Susie Violet Ward has a strong claim to be one of the world’s leading Bitcoin journalists, and her Forbes pieces have become go-to reading on the subject. We’ll highlight a few in this piece, but the article here on Bitcoin’s use in Lebanon is particularly poignant given how the rest of the year unfolded: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/02/02/lebanons-economic-rebirth-through-bitcoin/

Susie also began what became a marathon effort to follow and cover the numerous Craig Wright legal shenanigans:

Following our lobbying efforts regarding retail access to Bitcoin ETFs, we were pleased to see Lord Taylor of Warwick asking the UK government the same question:

The City Minister had also responded to us on the subject by this point, and we followed up with him on ETF access as below:

Our Education team had been hard at work throughout - teaching groups of kids about Bitcoin through node-building and computer science:

Freddie was interviewed in depth by 2140 Magazine: https://2140art.com/protecting-bitcoiner-freedoms-in-the-uk-and-abroad/

Susie was nominated as a leading woman in Bitcoin by Bitcoin DADA!

Some of the team made it to Bitcoin Atlantis, where Susie spoke on Bitcoin mining and its methane mitigation potential.

Back to Parliament, this time attending a meeting of the Crypto APPG to criticize the frictions caused by the FCA that are impeding UK citizens from buying Bitcoin. We followed up this meeting with a written paper sent to the All Party Parliamentary Group.

More student cohorts were able to experiment with miners owing to kind donations from our supporters.

The team were proud to be able to support Musqet at their launch event in Brighton with Dominic Frisby:

We continued throughout the year loudly to oppose the creation of CBDCs, whether in the UK or elsewhere: https://uk.bitcoinpolicy.net/privacy-and-the-digital-pound-resisting-threats-to-privacy-and-financial-freedom/

For the first quarter of the year, we’d been working closely with the Human Rights Foundation to prepare for an event in London; bringing together NGO leaders, human rights advocates, and policymakers to explore the integration of Bitcoin into their work:

Our new head of mining, Nick Bowick, had a terrific first interview on What Bitcoin Did:

And Freddie came back to have a slightly drier chat on the state of the regulatory battle in the UK:

Following the removal of Phoenix Wallet from US apps stores, and the increasingly hostile US environment, we prepared and published some basic privacy and self-sovereignty tips for Bitcoiners: https://x.com/freddienew/status/1784218269542498318

In May, we were delighted that Susie and Freddie were invited on to The Progressive Bitcoiner podcast: https://progressivebitcoiner.com/tpb86-bitcoin-advocacy-in-the-uk-with-freddie-new-and-susie-ward/

Ahead of the UK’s General Election, the team drafted and made available a template letter for voters to send to their candidates to make clear their position on Bitcoin: https://x.com/freddienew/status/1799089720271450363

And Freddie spoke on the dangers of CBDCs at the Bulgaria Bitcoin Conference in Sofia:

Hot on the heels of the Labour election victory, we published the first iteration of our research into Bitcoin mining as a demand response buyer of power, and how important it could be for the UK’s renewable energy grids:

https://uk.bitcoinpolicy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Bitcoin-Mining-UK-Analysis-Aug-2024.pdf

We were delighted to offer our services as a contributor to the new Genesis education platform in collaboration with The Bitcoin Collective:

Freddie spoke at a panel session hosted by @digitalpoundfdn, offering an opposing voice to the introduction of a UK CBDC.

Ahead of Bitcoin Nashville, we released a key policy paper, sent to HM Treasury and published here, setting out key policy suggestions for the UK to adopt and recommending an enlightened approach to the UK’s Bitcoin holdings and the first mover advantages that the UK currently has: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sUp-W6r816mPPQr0jGEKM2OfhWy1I8Ak/view

Susie spoke at Bitcoin Nashville!

In August we published further privacy hints and tips in response both to the continuing chatter about a UK CBDC and the encroachment of facial recognition technology into the UK: https://x.com/freddienew/status/1823665384370634937

Susie then spoke at Baltic Honeybadger:

Coinscrum interviewed Russell Rukin and Nick Bowick from our Mining and Energy team: https://x.com/freddienew/status/1874100943815631339

By September, a new bill - including language granting the legal recognition of digital assets such as Bitcoin for which we have been lobbying, and incorporating the very same concepts that we have recommended in communications with lawmakers - is introduced into Parliament! A significant step in the right direction.

Also in September, we held the first of our events generously supported by the Human Rights Foundation, and were delighted to welcome Nick Anthony from the Cato Institute as a keynote speaker.

Following the change of government, we drafted and published a new open letter to the incoming City Minister, Tulip Siddiq MP, re-iterating our previous position on ETF access for UK citizens:

We received a response in October, and have written back with further details:

From our mining team (and with thanks to all our supporters, and with an extra shout out to Nolle Engineering):

Susie’s endless work to correct inaccuracies and expose bias in BBC anti-Bitcoin reporting continued apace:

We made sure that Labour party members had copies both of our mining paper and our nation state adoption paper - delivered in person at the Labour Party Conference by our contacts at CryptoUK :

We were proud to work with L0la L33tz to support her efforts to wring a Freedom of Information response from the National Crime agency:

Freddie was invited to the Global Bitcoin Summit in Nashville, hosted by Bitcoin Park and by the Human Rights Foundation, and then both he and Susie spoke at Bitcoin Amsterdam:

The ECB released yet another ill-considered paper on Bitcoin; Freddie was able to collaborate with Dr Murray Rudd, Dennis Porter and Allen Farrington to write a paper in response: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/10/22/experts-challenge-ecbs-claims-on-bitcoin-and-wealth-inequality/

In the second of our events hosted with the support of the Human Rights Foundation and in collaboration with Axiom Capital, Musqet and ZBD (plus kind donations from CoinCorner!) we brought together UK builders, investors and especially those in the pay tech space, to hear how Bitcoin can function as an integrated part of payment solutions, whether simply in the UK or in sending money directly to those who need it in conflict zones across the world; and how we can get this message through to UK regulators:

More ongoing dialogue with HM Treasury on the UK’s Bitcoin holdings and sensible policies the nation should consider in this regard: https://x.com/freddienew/status/1859211261034000831

In November Susie spoke at NiceHash in Slovenia on KYC and Mining:

To round out the year, Susie spoke at Bitcoin MENA:

And Freddie spoke on CBDCs at the Africa Bitcoin Conference:

We also were delighted to appoint Susie as our new CEO!

And finally, after much lobbying, we are finally seeing questions being asked in Parliament on Bitcoin. Let’s aim for more traction on this in 2025!