When Bitcoin Rose $10K, I Remember the Unsent Message: Hong Kong’s Digital Soul Under Surveillance

The 3 AM Ledger

I was awake at 3 AM again—just like last month’s OTC trade log flickering on my screen. Bitcoin had risen $10K. No one celebrated. No press release came fast enough to soften the silence. Just a notification in the chain: Hong Kong’s Securities and Financial Bureau had just passed a law requiring licenses for virtual asset dealers.

Code as Confession

They said it was ‘rational.’ But I heard it differently—the gas fees spiked like a whispered prayer in an empty wallet. Each transaction wasn’t a trade; it was a confession. Every signature on-chain carried the weight of someone who chose compliance over freedom.

The Unsent Message

I don’t believe they meant to regulate markets. They meant to regulate souls.

The old paperwork didn’t set a transition period—it erased grace before it could be written. No license? A fine of $5M and seven years in prison weren’t penalties—they were elegies.

Who We Became

I grew up between Brooklyn and Berkeley: my mother wrote poems in Xhosa; my father built smart contracts in Dublin. We never called it ‘technology.’ We called it ‘how we hold each other after midnight.’

When you trade NFTs for safety, you don’t get permission—you get memory. And sometimes, the most dangerous thing isn’t price. it’s who got left unsent.