Nineteen-Eighty-Four has never felt closer, with devices that spy on us and powerful algorithmic machines tracking our every move and financial transaction. The noose around our financial freedoms is ever-tightening.
BULL Bitcoin, a Canadian non-custodial Bitcoin exchange and an Innovators-level sponsor of BTCHEL2026, today launches its Stop DAC8 campaign, designed to counter the 2026 EU Directive that requires European crypto-asset service providers to collect and hand over identity and transaction data for millions of customers. DAC8 came into effect this year, with the first reports expected by 2027.
Under the guise of transparency, the stated purpose of DAC8 is to exchange information between tax authorities, but “the danger lies in the creation of a mass database linking legal identity, home address and transaction history, including transactions that have no relevance whatsoever to taxation,” reads the BULL Bitcoin press release on July 8.
Earlier this year, BULL Bitcoin, recently MiCA-licensed through its AMF (LEONOD SARL) entity, filed a summary petition to France’s Conseil d’État, a legal advisor for the executive branch and an administrative court within the French legal system. Bull Bitcoin petitions France’s Conseil d’État to strike down DAC8, which constitutes a dangerous mass surveillance of crypto-assets and their holders. It estimates that between 40 and 135 million Europeans are at physical risk if their crypto data is leaked or abused.
“DAC8 has transformed the concept of Know Your Customer into Kill Your Customer,” says Francis Pouliot, CEO of Bull Bitcoin.
Honeypots Are Dangerous and Unnecessary. Don’t Create (More of) Them
France has been particularly hard hit by attacks against and kidnappings of known personalities in the broader cryptocurrency sphere. When your address and other personal information about you and your family are leaked, together with exact bitcoin (or cryptocurrency) withdrawals in your name, you’re put in particular danger. The microscopic tax and anti-money laundering benefits that may stem from MiCA and DAC8 legislation are completely undermined by the increased threat and danger these informational honeypots pose to civilians.
“Against a backdrop of daily data leaks and a surge in assaults and kidnappings targeting crypto-asset holders, building such a database endangers the physical safety of millions of holders and their loved ones. The civil servants with access to this data are also put at risk, becoming targets for anyone seeking to obtain it”
“We’re at a crossroads,” reads the manifesto accompanying the DAC8 website. BULL Bitcoin holds DAC8 to be the “greatest threat to date to the survival of fundamental rights and Bitcoin’s cypherpunk principles.”
Bull Bitcoin stands as a bulwark: we refuse to be accomplices to this abuse by governments. We refuse to submit without a fight.
That is why we have launched a legal action to strike down this law.
The manifesto states that the BULL team is “extremely conscious that we are mandated by law to maintain a honeypot of extremely sensitive private information. In practice, we do everything we can to make sure that this data stays within the walled gardens of our system.”
Press contact: Theo Mogenet, Managing Director of Bull Bitcoin in Europe (theo@bullbitcoin.com).