Bitcoin Magazine
Ten Decrees: Old Masters, New Money
On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon announced that he had directed Treasury Secretary John Connally “to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold.” The suspension was never lifted. Fifty-five years later to the day, Lucho Poletti unveiled the first of ten drawings responding to that decree.
Europe had experienced its own monetary upheavals. Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder worked during an era of expanding banking, credit, and speculation. Antwerp, where Bruegel worked, became one of Europe’s great commercial centers. Both painters populated their compositions with hundreds of figures, constructing elaborate worlds in which human behavior, social order, and moral judgment could be examined simultaneously.
Bitcoin artists have increasingly returned to this visual tradition. Pepenardo’s Master Cuts Out the Stone, exhibited by BMAG earlier this year, reimagined Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s The Surgeon as a study of who extracts and who is extracted from. Carlijn Kingma’s The Waterworks of Money, shown at Bitcoin Amsterdam last year, depicted the modern monetary system as an interconnected landscape. Complex systems seem to invite pictures that hold everything in a single frame.
Lucho Poletti has made bitcoin-related art since 2017, describing his practice as visual propaganda for the monetary revolution. A contributor to the Bitcoin Conference art gallery since 2021, he returns to Bitcoin Amsterdam this November with Ten Decrees.
The series reimagines ten paintings, four by Bosch and six by Bruegel, around money. Fiat, Latin for “let it be done,” becomes the organizing principle. Nine titles issue commands: let there be fury, profit, chaff, a game, folly, hunger, refuge, collapse, and ash. The tenth, Ultima Fiat, reverses that authority: let it be the last.
Unveiled on August 15, 2026, the anniversary of Nixon’s announcement, the series follows a biweekly release schedule beginning August 29 and concluding January 3, 2027, the anniversary of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block. Each drawing contains hundreds of figures and objects, with inscriptions often visible only at close range. The 30-by-20-inch prints, produced in editions of ten, form a composition spanning approximately four meters when arranged in two rows of five.
Five drawings have been released, most recently Fiat Moria, after Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs, on October 24. The sixth, Fiat Fames, follows November 7.
Ahead of Bitcoin Amsterdam, November 5–6, I spoke with Poletti about the recurring influence of Bosch and Bruegel on bitcoin art, the relationship between allegory and propaganda, and translating his densely detailed drawings to the conference’s main-stage LED installation.
BMAG: Bosch and Bruegel seem to be having a synchronistic moment among artists interested in Bitcoin. Both worked in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, during a period when Antwerp was emerging as a major financial center and the Habsburgs were debasing coinage. What is it about transitional periods (like the current one) that draws artists back to Bosch and Bruegel and their densely populated landscapes?
Lucho Poletti: Because they had already solved the problem I was stuck with: how do you draw a whole society going wrong at once? Bosch and Bruegel put hundreds of people in a single frame, each busy with their own concerns. The system shows up in the sum of it. You don’t look at a Bruegel, you search it. It’s a great way to depict the effects of money, which nobody really sees and everybody feels.
They also lived through a money problem a lot like ours. Silver from the Americas poured into Europe through Seville and on to the bankers in Antwerp. Prices across Western Europe rose sixfold over 150 years. Philip II defaulted in 1557 and the crash spread across all of Europe. Two years later Bruegel painted Netherlandish Proverbs, a village where everyone is absorbed in something foolish and nobody can see the whole.
The four Bosch pieces are about appetite: the temptation, and the bill that shows up after. The six Bruegels are about the crowd, and how society behaves once the rules stop making sense.
BMAG: The series draws on the original meaning of the F-word every bitcoiner knows. Nine of your titles use fiat as a command, while the tenth, Ultima Fiat, seems to reverse that authority. How did you arrive at Latin as the language of the series, and why does the final decree change speaker?
Lucho Poletti: Fiat was never a noun. In Latin it’s a verb, “let it be done.” It’s the word God speaks in the Latin Genesis before the light comes on: fiat lux. Someone with authority says so and it happens. That’s a literal description of how fiat money comes into existence, so I wanted the verb in every title.
Latin wasn’t a stretch for me. I’ve titled work in it for years: Moneta Divina, Cypher Deos, and Novus Moneta Seclorum dating back to 2020. The dollar already speaks it, too. Turn over a one-dollar bill and there are three Latin mottos on the back. Ultima Fiat, Fiat Lucrum and Furia Fiat had their names before the series did. Once there were three decrees in concept, I kept going until I had ten, and the name for the whole series became obvious. Ten Decrees has the Ten Commandments sitting under it, which suits work rebuilt out of painted sermons. In Fiat Lucrum there’s a lighthouse at the top left with FIAT LUX GENESIS 1:3 engraved into it. The title is the phrase rewritten for the money printers: let there be light turned into let there be profit.
Nine of the decrees are issued to you, in the flat voice an institution uses. Let there be profit, let there be hunger, let there be a game. The tenth is the only one we get to say back. Ultima fiat means “let it be the last,” which is closer to a plea than an order. Every one of us has been living under the first nine since 1971, whether we noticed or not, and Bitcoin is how we issue the tenth. It closes the series on January 3, the anniversary of the Genesis Block, which also happens to be my birthday.
BMAG: Bosch and Bruegel constructed extraordinarily complex visual worlds where allegory, satire, religious symbolism, and everyday life coexist. Their paintings invite close inspection but rarely offer a single, definitive interpretation. In Ten Decrees, you’re borrowing their compositions while introducing a more explicit critique of the monetary system. How do you approach the relationship between ambiguity and message in your work?
Lucho Poletti: The words carry the message so the people don’t have to. Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights doesn’t have a single word in it. Fiat Lucrum has more than fifty lettered objects, and some are as blunt as a protest sign: four money presses lettered QE-1, QE-2, QE-3 and QE-∞, and a little hand-lettered card on a broker’s desk that reads genius, we print, you pay, have a nice day. Nobody has to wonder what I think of the money system.
I keep the ambiguity in the people. In Fiat Lucrum there’s a crowd cheering a woman who holds up a $ on a golden staff under a sign that says ETF, and that crowd is wearing my mask. So is the man signing the leverage contract, and so is the woman taking the mortgage. In Fiat Palea a man in the mask is knee-deep in a pile of printed bills. Bosch drew his own neighbors into the middle of the garden, and I drew mine. If the ₿ on a forehead were a badge of honor, I wouldn’t hand it out like that. It’s more a badge of the aware, the initiated. Knowing the money is broken doesn’t make one a saint.
I’m careful with endings too. These pieces show the exit while not promising a way out. Near the middle of Fiat Moria there’s a lit doorway with MONEY ₿ BETTER WORLD over the arch, and a plain-faced man on the step looking back at the square. He hasn’t gone in yet, and nobody’s stopping him. Where you’d be standing in that picture is your call.
BMAG: In Fiat Lucrum, your reinterpretation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, you introduce a system of waterworks: pipes, reservoirs, and flowing liquidity. Bosch often allowed viewers to recognize things that the figures within his paintings could not. What possibilities does that kind of visual allegory offer you when depicting something as abstract as the monetary system?
Lucho Poletti: What Bosch never had in his garden was plumbing, so I gave it some. Water organizes the whole of Fiat Lucrum. It starts clean high in the mountains on the left, pours out of a machine in Eden and settles in a reflecting basin. Cut into the basin’s wall there’s an inspection window with fish swimming behind the glass. Somebody built a viewing port into the reservoir so you could check it, and every full node on the Bitcoin network is that window.
Downstream the water widens into a lake. In the middle sits a glass tank lettered FRESH LIQUIDITY, with BOTTOMLESS engraved on the bowl, and eight people are having the party of their lives inside it. The valve wheel that controls the flow is on top of the dome, outside the glass, where none of them can reach it. Monetary policy gets set by someone who isn’t at the party. And the tank leaks. From there the water runs orange, down a stream and over a waterfall into a pool where a tick with a $ on its cheek drinks it through a hose.
That’s the Bosch trick you’re describing. The bathers can’t see the leak or the valve, and you can see both from across the room. Richard Cantillon worked out around 1730 that new money helps whoever gets it first and costs whoever gets it last. I drew it as a watercourse because everybody already understands water: whoever’s upstream drinks first, and everyone downstream gets what’s left.
BMAG: Looking across the series, are there particular details, references, or artistic decisions that you feel are especially important but might be overlooked by viewers? What would you want someone encountering these drawings for the first time to spend more time looking at?
Lucho Poletti: Up close is where these work, and most of what matters in them is small.
Start with the plain faces. Everybody spots the Satoshi masks and the $ skulls first because they’re the loud ones, but the plain faces belong to the people the system is happening to. In Furia Fiat a line of bald men crawl on their hands and knees with red tubes plugged into the backs of their skulls, and the red is the same color as the fluid in a bowl a few meters away that says TIME. That’s what’s being drained out of them. In Fiat Palea, Adam and Eve stand under a serpent with a $ for an eye. They’re wearing the mask, but neither of them has a ₿ on the brow yet.
Then look at how characters connect across a distance. In Fiat Ludus a sack lettered STIMULUS sits on a bench next to an older figure, and a little way off a kid walks away with the same sack on his back, lettered THE BILL. A blindfolded boy feels around with his arms out while the man lunging in beside him holds up a bunch of $ balloons the boy can’t see. Even the enrollment forms are signed by Seymore Debt and Max D. Out.
In Fiat Palea a broken crate stenciled EXECUTIVE ORDER 6102 sits in the straw, and further back, bolted across a vault, a plate reads WINDOW, NO REDEMPTION. Roosevelt took the gold in 1933 and Nixon closed the window in 1971, and I put the two close enough that you read one and then find the other. Up higher in the same piece, a guy in the mask with WHOOPS across his vest is pouring gasoline on a burning bank. In Furia Fiat, the $ skulls stand on GNOSIS and clutch books of knowledge, keeping them for themselves.
The bubbles are dated. Fiat Ludus has a sphere with tulips growing out of the top, marked 1637 and 1720, and another with a hen sitting on a WALL STREET egg, marked 1929 and 2008. Variety’s front page the day after the 1929 crash read WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG. Some of the skies have thin straight lines of cloud behind the smoke, the kind a plane leaves.
Watch the prices, too. A price in dollars only goes up: at CANTILLON’S hot dog stand in Fiat Ludus the 5¢ is crossed out and the sign says $9. A price in sats only goes down: a fish stall in Fiat Moria has 4000 crossed out, then 2000, and now it’s 1000 SATS. In Fiat Ludus, the carrots changing hands have dropped from 7,500 to 3,000 SATS on the chalkboard next to the dollar hopscotch.
The Latin is there to be read. MORITURI TE SALUTANT, those who are about to die salute you, is carved around the rim of the arena in Fiat Ludus. EX NIHILO, out of nothing, is cut over an empty vault in Fiat Palea. In Fiat Moria the $ skull leaning out of the window has a plaque on either side of him: MUNDUS VULT DECIPI, the world wants to be deceived, and $TULTORUM INFINITUS EST NUMERUS, the number of fools is infinite, with a $ for the S. Fiat Lucrum has a little panel that runs a whole life in four stops: school, debt, work, death.
And in Fiat Moria there’s a small round time machine with NO RETURN on its side and 1944-2026 on the dial. A man is climbing out of it, staring at the village. 1944 is Bretton Woods, when the world tied its money to the dollar and the dollar to gold. He left then and he’s only just arrived, and he can’t quite believe what he’s looking at.
None of that comes with a caption. You find it by standing close for a long time, the way you would with a Bruegel, and the finding is the whole point.
BMAG: Each drawing is 18,000 pixels wide, populated by hundreds of figures, with every Satoshi mask drawn by hand and details that only reveal themselves up close. You’ve described the work as “crafted, not generated.” At a time when AI can convincingly imitate the Old Masters, what significance does that labor have for you, and how does it shape the way you want these works to be experienced?
Lucho Poletti: “Crafted, not generated” is a phrase I came up with to sum up where the work in these pieces actually is. There are machines in my process, but they’re only one part of it. A model I trained on years of my own work does the rough first pass on a composition. I think of it as an apprentice. Bosch came out of a family workshop, and the masters of his day leaned on assistants for the groundwork so their own hours could go into the meaning. Mine roughs out the scene and gives me a base to build toward the standard they set. Then I spend weeks on each piece in a grueling manual process in Photoshop, making the decisions and drawing in hundreds of figures, objects, symbols and phrases until the art says what I mean.
AI can imitate the look of a Bosch or a Bruegel pretty convincingly now. What it can’t do is mean anything. It won’t decide that the valve on the liquidity tank in Fiat Lucrum belongs outside the glass, where the bathers can’t reach it. It won’t decide that the slop on the ground should be piggy banks wired into the money presses, each with its own name: SAVINGS, PENSION, NEST EGG. It doesn’t make jokes either. It’s never going to sit a fool in a jester’s cap on a platform lettered TAKE IT AT FACE VALUE while a $ skull does his makeup. My personal philosophy is that if I don’t do the majority of the work, it’s not my art. I hold myself to that, and anyone who looks at these up close can see a person made the decisions that matter.
That’s how I’d like people to take these in: up close, and for a long time. I don’t ask anyone to trust me on how they were made. The work answers that better than I can.
BMAG: You’ve been part of the Bitcoin Conference since 2021, and this November Ten Decrees comes to the main stage at Bitcoin Amsterdam, not far from the historical centers where Bosch and Bruegel worked. These drawings are extraordinarily detailed, designed to reward close inspection. How are you approaching their translation to monumental LED screens, and does exhibiting them in the Netherlands carry any particular significance for you?
Lucho Poletti: The prints were meant for one person standing close to search the work and find details that speak to them. An LED wall gets a thousand people at fifty meters, which is an amazing opportunity to create a visual experience for the still pieces, so I’ve done my best to create a compelling one for each piece.
Each one gets fifteen seconds, in the order they were released. The big center wall carries the center of each piece in one slow pass from left to right, so the room gets the shape of it. The screen on the right opens on the Bosch or Bruegel it came from, with its name and date, and halfway through it wipes across to mine. The screen on the left side pulls out lateral details you’d never catch from the floor, like the ship of fools riding the mast in Fiat Moria, or the pigs feeding at the DEBASED trough. All five released so far play back to back as one loop, old master and new money side by side the whole way through.
The Netherlands matters to me. Bosch spent his whole life in ’s-Hertogenbosch, about an hour south of Amsterdam by train. Some of Bruegel’s proverbs are still in use in Dutch: people still say someone hangs his cloak to the wind when he turns with the crowd, and in Fiat Moria, a man wearing a Satoshi mask jumps off a mountain, holding his cloak in his hand—a reference to the Dutch proverb about changing one’s position to suit the prevailing winds.
Amsterdam has its own chapter in this story. The Bank of Amsterdam opened in 1609 to give merchants a money nobody could debase, and for over a century its bank guilder traded at a premium over ordinary coin because people trusted the silver was in the vault. David Hume held it up as the model of a fully backed bank. It had been lending to the Dutch East India Company quietly, and when that became public in 1790 the premium vanished and the bank declared itself insolvent. I can’t think of a better city to show a series about monetary decrees and trust, two months before the last one lands on the Genesis Block anniversary.
Lucho Poletti’s Ten Decrees will be on view on the main stage at Bitcoin Amsterdam, November 5–6, 2026, as part of the Bitcoin Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) programming. Explore Poletti’s detailed write-ups on each Decree for a deeper look at the artwork, symbolism, and historical references throughout the series, and follow him on X.
Read more from BMAG’s Bitcoin Amsterdam series: The Undercurrent: Three European Artists on Making Money Visible and The Architecture of Money: Mapping Financial Power in the Age of Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) organizes international exhibitions, auctions, and artist collaborations exploring bitcoin and its cultural implications.
Join us at Bitcoin Amsterdam, November 5–6, 2026, and use code BA26-BMAG20 for discounted admission. Get your tickets here.
This post Ten Decrees: Old Masters, New Money first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Dennis Koch.
Courses on Claude, ChatGPT, and DeepSeek teach prompting, data analysis, and automating weekly work tasks.
The post Learn to Build a Custom GPT and AI Workflows in This $35 Bundle appeared first on TechRepublic.
Courses on Claude, ChatGPT, and DeepSeek teach prompting, data analysis, and automating weekly work tasks.
The post Learn to Build a Custom GPT and AI Workflows in This $35 Bundle appeared first on TechRepublic.
Bitcoin Magazine
Deloitte’s Rob Massey: What Bitcoin Investors Need to Know About The Changing IRS Tax Guidance
Bitcoin tax rules have evolved, but the self-assessment system hasn’t changed. Rob Massey, who has advised on crypto taxes at Deloitte since 2012, explains why using Bitcoin as money creates “new muscle” for reporting, which wallet moves are and aren’t realization events, and why 1099s from brokers will never be the complete picture. Plus the one thing he’d ask Bitcoiners to advocate for, and it isn’t a repeal.
Chapters:
0:00 Where Bitcoin Tax Rules Stand: Self-Assessment and Barter Transactions
1:25 Broker Reporting, 1099s and Why They’ll Never Be the Full Picture
2:06 No De Minimis Exemption Has Passed: Report Everything, Small or Large
3:00 What Business Leaders Ask Now: ETFs, Leverage and Bitcoin Lending
4:07 Paying the Plumber Is Taxable and the IRS Sees Everything On Chain
5:38 What to Ask Treasury For: More Guidance on Lending, Character and Basis
6:51 Bitcoin Across Borders: No Tax Treaties, Withholding and Subpart F
8:50 How Multinationals Compare Bitcoin and Stablecoins by Payment Corridor
10:06 Unreported 2015 Pizza? Attorney, CPA, Complete Narrative, Come Clean
12:37 Proving Cost Basis After Years of Moving Coins,
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
This post Deloitte’s Rob Massey: What Bitcoin Investors Need to Know About The Changing IRS Tax Guidance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.
South Africa is taking an important step towards answering a question that has hung over its crypto market for years:
How should crypto assets be treated under the country’s rules on moving money across its borders?
The problem is not new.
South Africa has long run an exchange-control system to manage capital flowing in and out of the country. The National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), through its Financial Surveillance Department (FinSurv), administer it under the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961.
The problem is that crypto does not fit neatly into a system built around banks, foreign currencies and conventional payment channels.
That raises a legal question:
Is crypto “capital” for the purposes of exchange control?
Two High Court decisions show the uncertainty.
In Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd v South African Reserve Bank, SARB had forfeited funds linked to cryptocurrency transactions involving Leo Cash and Carry (Pty) Ltd.
Standard Bank challenged the forfeiture, arguing that cryptocurrency was not “capital” under Regulation 10(1)(c). The court agreed, finding that cryptocurrencies fell outside the definitions of “money” and “capital” in the Regulations, and set the forfeiture aside.
In Mangundhla & Dangaiso, the court went the other way. The case involved roughly 1,680 Bitcoin, bought in South Africa and valued at under R182 million, which were sent to wallets reachable through exchanges outside the country. SARB forfeited certain Bitcoin and funds held in the applicants’ Standard Bank and Luno accounts.
This time the court held that Bitcoin could constitute capital, based on the ordinary meaning, context and purpose of the legislation.
This result is the real gap.
If crypto is capital, its cross-border movement can fall under exchange control. If it is not, applying the old framework becomes very difficult. The position is also still unsettled, because the Standard Bank decision is subject to appeal. The courts exposed the problem, but they did not solve it.
That is the background to the Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations, 2026, published for public comment on 17 April 2026. On 15 May 2026, the National Treasury and SARB followed with a joint statement covering, among other things, how crypto assets are treated, held and traded, and how they move across borders.
The draft regulations are broader than crypto. They are meant to replace the 1961 regulations and modernise how South Africa manages international capital flows, moving towards a risk-based, surveillance-oriented model. Instead of relying mainly on prior approvals, the aim is to let legitimate transactions flow while strengthening reporting, monitoring and intervention for high-risk activity.
For crypto, the key point is that the draft does not build a separate system. It places crypto assets inside the existing framework, alongside foreign currency, securities and gold.
Buying and selling
Purchases, sales, borrowing and lending of crypto above a set threshold would generally have to go through an Authorised Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP), or otherwise meet permission requirements. A CASP could only carry out the activities it is authorised for, and the National Treasury could add conditions or bar it from dealing with particular people, assets or transactions.
Moving crypto abroad
This is arguably the most significant part. Taking or sending crypto out of South Africa, delivering it for removal, and certain payments involving people outside the country would generally need permission from the National Treasury or an authorised body.
Declaring foreign crypto
A person in South Africa who gains control or possession of a foreign asset or crypto asset may have to declare it within a set period. The declaration would cover when and how it was acquired, where it is held and whether it is linked to a foreign liability. Once declared, later sales or transfers could be restricted.
Seizure, blocking and forfeiture
If there are reasonable grounds to believe crypto is connected to a contravention, authorities could seize it or block dealings with it in an account, and it could eventually be forfeited to the State.
The draft even deals with the practicalities of crypto: after forfeiture, the previous holder may be required to hand over the passwords, PINs or codes needed to access the assets.
The proposed draft contains safeguards. Forfeiture decisions must comply with the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, and affected people can challenge attachment, blocking, and forfeiture through judicial review.
The Draft Crypto Asset Manual for Cross-Border Activities supplies the operational detail. Its main job is to say when a crypto transaction becomes a cross-border one for exchange-control purposes.
These flows are intended to be identifiable and reportable to FinSurv.
With a non-custodial wallet, the user holds the private keys and there is no intermediary holding the assets. Even so, the framework treats a transfer from a domestic CASP to such a wallet as an outward movement of value.
It also takes a stricter line on certain inward transfers from non-custodial wallets, treating them as non-permissible. The focus is not on whether an asset sits on a blockchain, but on where the value comes from, where it goes and whether it crosses the border.
For now, the Manual is narrow on who can send crypto offshore. Individuals can do so through authorised CASPs using their existing foreign-exchange allowances, such as the Single Discretionary Allowance (SDA) or Foreign Capital Allowance (FCA), subject to the applicable requirements. That is not a general permission for every person or business to move crypto abroad, and other categories will depend on the final rules.
Taken together, the draft is not trying to prohibit cross-border crypto activity. It is trying to make crypto movements visible to the capital-flow system. Exchange control was designed for a world of identifiable institutions and bank accounts, and crypto can move value across borders without passing through any of them. The trigger-point approach gives regulators a way to see when that movement matters.
It is also activity-based.
At this stage it does not distinguish between types of crypto asset, and it does not treat crypto as official currency or legal tender.
So the framework is less about whether Bitcoin or a stablecoin is “money,” and more about whether an activity amounts to a movement of value that should be subject to capital controls.
This will sit on top of existing oversight.
The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) already play roles in regulating crypto activity. A crypto business may therefore need to ask two separate things:
Am I authorised to provide this service, and does this particular transaction create an exchange-control or reporting obligation?
The draft regulations supply the legal architecture for bringing crypto into South Africa’s capital-flow regime, and the Manual supplies the practical test for when a transaction is caught.
What I find most telling is where the rules choose to focus. They do not try to settle what crypto is. They regulate what crypto does when it crosses a border.
That is a pragmatic response to the court split, because it sidesteps the “is it capital?” debate by looking at the movement of value instead.
For businesses and users, three questions will matter most:
For regulators, the goals are clear: better visibility over cross-border crypto flows, fewer chances for regulatory arbitrage and stronger detection of illicit finance, without choking off legitimate digital-asset use.
The open question is how well that balance survives the final text. Rules on non-custodial wallets, in particular, will test whether visibility can be achieved without making ordinary self-custody impractical.
The proposals are still subject to consultation and may change. But the direction is clear. Crypto may be borderless, but its movement across South Africa’s borders will increasingly come with rules on permission, reporting and oversight.
If you enjoy analytical commentary on digital asset regulation, crypto markets, and emerging financial technologies, consider subscribing to my newsletter where I share additional research, commentary, and industry insights.
https://samuel-ayodeji.kit.com/profile
Also, if your company, startup, or publication needs clear, well-researched content on blockchain, digital assets, fintech, or emerging technology law, my inbox is always open.
Moving Crypto Out of South Africa? What the Draft Capital Flow Rules Mean for Your Business was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
© Amelia Brust/Federal News Network
Block previews Dessa, a voice AI model trained without text. Explore its local hardware claims, safety risks, and what businesses should assess next.
The post Block Previews Dessa, an AI Voice Model Trained Without Text appeared first on TechRepublic.
Block previews Dessa, a voice AI model trained without text. Explore its local hardware claims, safety risks, and what businesses should assess next.
The post Block Previews Dessa, an AI Voice Model Trained Without Text appeared first on TechRepublic.
The name Frank X. Shaw isn’t as well known outside the company as those of Microsoft’s other senior leaders, and that’s the nature of the job. But behind the scenes, the company’s longtime communications chief has shaped its public image for nearly three decades, working for all three of its CEOs and handling its biggest stories along the way, from antitrust to AI.
Shaw announced in September that he’s leaving Microsoft at the end of the year. On this week’s GeekWire Podcast, he sits down for what amounts to an exit interview. We’re joined in the conversation by longtime Microsoft beat reporter Mary Jo Foley, editor in chief of Directions on Microsoft and a GeekWire contributing writer.
Shaw talks candidly about working for Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella, and about the situations he’d handle differently. He describes his behind-the-scenes dealings with some of the top reporters in tech, from an executive’s objection to a single word to the heated argument that changed how he saw his job.
He also reflects on how communications and media are changing in the AI era, and explains why trust still comes down to a belief in the person telling the story.
Listen below, and continue reading for highlights.
On Microsoft’s three CEOs: Shaw says intensity is what the three have in common, expressed differently: “Steve was outwardly intense. Satya is quietly intense, and Bill is cuttingly intense.”
Ballmer was the hardest to explain to the public, he says, because the loud-salesman caricature hid a thoughtful, detail-oriented leader who often played the boisterous public role because Microsoft’s sales force needed it.
On the clarity of hindsight: Big decisions look obvious once they work out, Shaw says. His example is the board’s choice of Satya Nadella as CEO. It’s seen as a no-brainer now, but at the time there was a lot of debate, there were other candidates, and it was a hard, complicated decision.
“When you get a decision right, it always looks easy afterwards,” he says. “If you get it wrong, you were just an idiot all along.”
On speaking up: A communications leader should weigh in when a decision could damage the brand, Shaw says, and he learned that the hard way.
When Mary Jo asks how he decides when to push back on executives, she raises the Kin as an example. Shaw says he thought the phone would fail. It was late to market, and it would cost more than people expected because it required a data plan. Engineers he talked to had their doubts, too.
But when Ballmer went around the table asking whether to launch it, Shaw stayed quiet, unsure a communications executive had standing to weigh in. Microsoft pulled it within weeks.
In hindsight, he says, framing it as a brand risk would have given him standing to speak: if the Kin failed, it would cause significant brand damage and hurt Microsoft with the younger audience it was trying to reach. He doubts speaking up would have changed the decision, but says he would have felt better about it.
On underestimating a story: A story that doesn’t get much initial attention can still define a company for years. Shaw’s example: Vanity Fair’s 2012 “lost decade” story.
As he recounts it, reporter Kurt Eichenwald told him, “If you don’t give me Steve and Bill, I’m just going to write a hit piece,” and then did. Shaw says he should have escalated to Vanity Fair sooner, and he underestimated how a story that got little immediate pickup would shape how reporters described Microsoft for the next four years.
On narratives: Continuing on that theme, Shaw says facts can be disputed but “narratives are sticky,” and a company can only change one by changing its own behavior. In the 2000s, he says, every story described Microsoft as “a convicted monopolist,” and ending stack ranking was part of how the company moved past the lost-decade image.
On what makes a good story: Shaw recalls having a shouting match with Rob Guth, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, over an article Shaw no longer remembers. It got heated enough that Shaw pulled his car over in Madison Park to keep arguing. (Guth now works as a writer and researcher for Bill Gates.)
Guth told him he was bad at his job because he thought the job was getting positive stories. What Shaw should want, Guth said, were interesting stories that showed something real about the company. Some would be less flattering, but they would be more memorable.
Shaw told him he was wrong. But after thinking it over, he concluded Guth was exactly right. A story about a product built perfectly that everyone loves is boring, he says. “That’s like the plane landed safely. Nobody cares.” The coverage worth hoping for illuminates part of the company in a memorable way, and that always comes with tension.
On taking risks with reporters: Cooperating on a story you can’t control is a risk worth taking when the result shows something real about the company, Shaw says. Asked by Mary Jo for an example, he points to The New Yorker’s long piece on Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, featuring Kevin Scott, the Microsoft chief technology officer.
Microsoft agreed to it knowing that the writer, Charles Duhigg, would talk to many people and test a thesis along the way, so there was no telling what would come out. Then Sam Altman’s brief ouster from OpenAI happened right before the story went to press. It was a risky story, Shaw says, but it captured the company at a revealing moment.
On corrections: Shaw’s test is whether something is “irritating” or “damaging.” Only factual errors that matter are worth pursuing, he says.
His example is a Bloomberg story by Dina Bass that described an executive as having “wooed” customers. The executive hated the word and wanted it changed, so Shaw made what he calls the run up the hill, pressing Bass on the exec’s behalf and asking her to check with her editors.
She pointed out that she hadn’t quoted the executive using the word, and the editors left it alone. The executive didn’t like it, Shaw says, but it wasn’t wrong.
On speaking with one voice: Shaw says a big part of his job was trying to ensure that a company of Microsoft’s size made sense to the world.
He recalls a Seattle Times reporter who got 26 pitches from Microsoft in one week and asked him which ones Microsoft thought were important. Sending pitches indiscriminately was a mistake, he says. The company needed to decide what three or four things mattered most and focus its messaging on those.
On building in public: Asked about recent internal memos pointing Microsoft toward more voices and less central messaging as he departs, Shaw says the company already has many employees talking about its products on LinkedIn, X and Reddit, and that’s a good thing.
Someone from Microsoft answering questions in a Reddit Excel thread doesn’t need to be babysat by the communications team, he says. He sees it as a continuation of what Microsoft did with Channel 9 and thousands of MSDN blogs.
At the same time, he says, there are moments, such as a big event or a major launch, when the company needs to break through.
“Every once in a while you want the world to know Microsoft had something to say today,” he says. That’s hard, it takes real effort, and it can’t happen every week or even every month, so the company has to pick those moments and do them right.
On AI and the media: AI can help spokespeople prepare, Shaw says, but asking it what Mary Jo will ask, for example, produces “generic Mary Jo questions.” The best interviewers, he says, deliberately avoid the predictable question.
On reporters’ styles: Preparing a spokesperson means knowing how a particular reporter works, Shaw says, and that comes from people who have sat through many of their interviews. His example is Steven Levy, the veteran tech journalist and Wired editor at large, who Shaw says can lull you with 10 minutes of easygoing conversation, then hit you with one sharp question after another.
Other reporters always sound negative in interviews but write straightforward stories, he says, and an executive who reads too much into the tone risks getting knocked off their game.
Asked to name the toughest reporter he has dealt with, Shaw pushes back on the label. Good reporters are tricky to work with because their job is to find things out and surprise you with what they know, he says. That doesn’t make them tough. What makes a situation difficult is usually a story with real conflict and tension, not the reporter.
On Microsoft in the AI era: Shaw sees AI in a transitional moment, moving away from a constant focus on the models themselves. Right now, he says, every new model release or manifesto makes everyone stop and look.
He hopes the attention will shift from new models to whether AI is actually useful, and he says that’s where Microsoft has historically been strongest.
Acknowledging that he’s still on the payroll and rooting for the company, he offers an analogy that will resonate with anyone who learned to drive a stick shift. The AI model companies want to drop a bigger, more powerful engine into businesses, and the result is often a lot of grinding of gears.
“We’re the clutch,” he says. Microsoft’s infrastructure, in his telling, lets companies absorb that power and get moving without the disruption of a new engine and a demand to go 110 miles per hour.
On journalism: “People trust what they hear because they trust the people,” Shaw says. Deep knowledge of a beat becomes more valuable as the world gets more transactional, he says, even as the business behind it becomes less sustainable.
On what’s next: Shaw plans to take some time off and isn’t making any big decisions. People have suggested consulting, another big communications job or board seats, he says, but he doesn’t want to rush into anything.
Mary Jo has a suggestion: run PR for OpenAI, “because man, they need somebody to help.” Shaw’s characteristically dry reply: “That would be such a low-stress job.”
Edited and produced by Curt Milton; Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
© AP
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey has pushed back against critics of Warhound, a new Texas startup he conceived with Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm that plans to clone and gene-edit working dogs for the U.S. military, law enforcement and emergency responders. Warhound emerged from stealth on Oct. 22, 2026, with a $200 million seed round, which […]
Login