🐻 The Tiktok ban could kill crypto

Happy Easter friends 🥚! Also happy belated birthday to the man (or woman) Satoshi who turned 48 this week. Other than that, it’s been a quiet week for crypto as Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to sit comfortably at their spots. So…when is the $1 million pump coming? Maybe the new CPI numbers and FOMC meeting next week will trigger something.

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In this issue:

📣The big story of the week. The Tiktok Ban Bill could also kill crypto.

🚀Bullish news. Apple has been hiding the Bitcoin whitepaper in Mac OS systems since 2018 and an unreleased David Bowie song will be sold as an NFT.

🐻Big, bad FUD. CZ fights off rumors of being wanted by the Interpol and Dogecoin pumps and dumps after Musk’s recent Twitter logo change.

📣The big story of the week

The Tiktok Ban Bill could also kill crypto

Since TIkTok entered the US market in 2018, this popular China-based app has been under heavy scrutiny by the Western government. As a result, Tiktok was banned on government-owned devices for federal and several state governments. But of course, they don’t want to stop there.

A few weeks ago, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified in front of a panel of US lawmakers over foreign national security concerns about the app. The claim is that Tiktok shares data of its 150 million US users with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government. Well, yes, but if we’re being honest, doesn’t the US government do the same? 🤔 

But instead, this video about whether Tiktok uses your home wifi went viral 🤦.

So what’s this got to do with crypto? Well, in efforts to ban this app, a legislative bill has been presented known as the RESTRICT Act (S.686 bill). Many people call this the “Tiktok Ban Bill”, but in reality, it impacts far more than just this social app. This latest bill introduced could be one of the greatest threats to the internet, our digital privacy and even crypto.

Here’s what you need to know:

🚩 The Restrict Act (S.686 bill), also known as the TikTok Ban Bill would give the government sweeping power to surveil any device you have that uses the internet.
🚩 You could face 20 years in prison and fined a minimum of $250 million for using a VPN to access a "banned app".
🚩 All this could be done with little oversight or review by an appointed committee.

As if this wasn’t already alarming enough, crypto Twitter folks also believe that the broad language in the bill could also be applied to block crypto transactions and even access to open-source protocols like Bitcoin.

If this bill passes, it could potentially do much more than just ban Tiktok in the US. It could effectively kill the internet and any little digital privacy we have left. It’s the Patriot Act on steroids.

Interesting how the government claims that they want to protect us from foreign nations, but yet we’re becoming more like a surveillance state everyday…

🚀Bullish news

🍎 Apple has been secretly shipping a copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper with every Apple MacOS since 2018. This is surprising given the fact that Apple isn’t particularly known to be crypto-friendly. Late last year, Apple insisted on charging a 30% fee on crypto apps in their Apple App Store. Tim Cook has also made public statements that Apple had no plans to expand to crypto. So what’s with the easter egg?

🎵 An unreleased David Bowie song will be released as an NFT. This never before heard version of “Let’s Dance” will be sold as an NFT as a pay-as-you-wish model with proceeds donated to the MusiCares charity.

🐻 Big, bad FUD

🐶 Dogecoin pumps up 20% after Elon switches Twitter’s logo to the iconic dog, but quickly drops back down. Elon has been hyping up the meme coin and teasing to use it for payments for a while, but it looks like people are tired of it. We’ll believe it when we see it!

🚨 Rumor spread that CZ of Binance was wanted by the Interpol. Don’t worry, it has been debunked as FUD, but it all started because of an encrypted message from crypto Twitter influencer, Cobie. The message that was cracked and leaked read: “Interpol Red Notice for CZ”. FUD quickly spread like wildfire but has since been confirmed by Cobie that it was not meant for the public.