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So pleased to announce the publication of my first book: Who holds the key? An Everyday Guide to Cryptography, Passwords, Crypto Wallets, and navigating the technology that protects your privacy in the modern world.
You used cryptography fifty times before breakfast. Isn't it time you understood the locks your life depends on?
You unlocked your phone with your face. Paid for coffee with a tap. Sent a message that says it's "end-to-end encrypted." Checked your bank without typing a password. Every one of those moments ran on cryptography — working so silently you never saw it. This book is about what happens when you finally look.
No math. No jargon. No paranoia. Just clear answers to the questions everyone quietly wonders about:
Can WhatsApp really not read my messages? (Mostly true — with four asterisks that matter.)
Where does my Face ID data go — and is it safe?
Isn't keeping every password in one app insane?
What am I agreeing to when my wallet says "Sign"?
Will quantum computers break everything?
When should I worry?
What happens to my crypto, accounts, and photos when I die?
This book answers the questions that help you decide amongst the bewildering array of options that are forced upon everyday people all the time — primarily by platforms. Which messaging app to use, should you use a passkey or a password, which encryption options to turn on, back up your data to the cloud or not. Most often the defaults don’t protect your privacy, but rather leave your data open to harvesting. By understanding some key concepts drawn from the world of cryptography, you will make better decisions for you and your family. I hope you enjoy this exploration.
The whole book rests on four plain ideas — keys, who holds them, signing, and where keys live — and one master question you'll use for the rest of your life: who holds the key? By the last page you'll judge any app, gadget, or frightening headline for yourself, and you'll know exactly which handful of switches to flip tonight, sorted Good / Better / Paranoid, so you can protect what matters and relax about the rest.
Written for the everyday reader — the one who taps, swipes, messages, banks, and wonders. If you can lock a front door, you can understand the locks that now guard your money, your memories, and your voice. In a world increasingly run by locks you cannot see, knowing even a little about how they work puts the power back where it belongs: with you.
Available now on Amazon, Apple and at independent bookstores around the world.
whoholdsthekey.com
Please write a review! – at London, England
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
A $17.45 million token sale from 2018 still can't get a CEX listing. That's the whole story on legacy issuance, and it explains where listing flow has gone.
Vault12's read: venues won't touch $VGT without explicit SEC immunity, because a listing today can be re-read as an unregistered securities distribution years later. The proposal is a 60-day clock, file it, and if the SEC stays silent the filing becomes conclusive.
What that changes for structure: a silence-is-consent rule would pull a backlog of 2017-2018 vintage tokens toward listing, and each one is fresh float hitting order books with no price discovery behind it. Venues would reprice listing fees around that risk.
Until a rule like this exists, the flow stays in the private and OTC channels, thin books, wide spreads. The 60-day window is the number that decides whether that changes.
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
𝗟𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧🔥 𝗖𝗿𝘆𝗽𝘁𝗼 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 & 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀
⭐OCC finalizes GENIUS Act rule, effective Jan 18, 2027
⭐SEC closes comment period on Regulation Crypto Assets
⭐Multiple chains urge SEC to classify tokens as digital commodities
⭐Ripple files letter backing the proposal, says SEC has clear authority
⭐Vault12: token safe harbor still lacks certainty; exchanges fear retroactive liability; proposes a 60-day objection window
⭐Cardano Foundation on EU's MiCA review: improve the existing framework, don't expand it
⭐Securitize integrates Anchorage Digital Bank's stablecoin, linking the dollar leg of tokenized trading
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Why centralized exchanges refuse to list legacy crypto tokens without explicit SEC immunity
Vault12 raised $17.45 million selling VGT in 2018 and says it met or dropped every promise, yet the token has never traded on a centralized exchange.
coindesk.com/policy/2026/10/…
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Last week I was in Washington, DC with a parliamentary delegation led by Dr Lisa Cameron, Founder, US-UK Crypto Alliance, former Chair UK Crypto All Party Parliamentary Group APPG and former-MP, @KulveerRanger, UK House of Lords, and @Lord_ofWarwick for three days of meetings across Capitol Hill, the White House and the regulators. Here's what I took away:
The Clarity Act will be back.
The cloture vote failed to advance the bill. But on both sides of the aisle, lawmakers told us they're confident it gets picked back up after the midterms. Senator Tillis's voting maneuver keeps the door open for the bill to be called back for another vote. The other factor was simply time: Congress left DC at the end of last week, presumably to prepare for the midterms, and there was no room left to finish the process.
The people in the room.
We met with senior members who lead or sit on the key financial services committees and subcommittees:
Chairman French Hill, who brings real financial services experience, having built a bank himself
Bryan Steil, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and AI
Rep. William Timmons of House Financial Services Committee
Senator @SenLummis’s team and @gillibrandn’s team
President's Council of Economic Advisors at the Whitehouse
Commissioner @HesterPeirce and team at the SEC
The banking lobby's argument is weaker than it sounds.
Banks are working hard to hold on to every last point of margin they earn from customers, which is why we keep hearing FUD about deposit flight and credit unions. At the @CEA47 in the White House walked us through their report issued last week. It uses extensive data to show that the risk stablecoin yield poses to the banking sector has been dramatically overstated.
The regulators aren't waiting.
The SEC and CFTC have stepped up work on market regulation. These rules would have been needed to implement the Clarity Act anyway. Now they're moving ahead with a tighter, more comprehensive framework for market structure. We look forward to the rapid implementation of these regulations.
A final meeting.
We met with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and her Crypto Task Force team. Commissioner Peirce will be stepping down soon, and the industry owes her a great deal for what she has led over the last several years. Her team has clear momentum in carrying that work forward
What's next: Vault12 will be submitting a comment letter on the proposed regulations. Stay tuned.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to meet with us.
A great many thanks to Jennifer Summers FCIM and Stefan Muehlbauer for organizing the meetings and shepherding us through the US Capitol
#Crypto #ClarityAct #DigitalAssets #Stablecoins #Web3 #Vault12 #UKUSCryptoAlliance
@EasyA (@dom_kwok, @kwok_phil), @Vault12 (@wasima), @Chilliz (Alexandre Dreyfus), @Monotlith (Rufus Daniel), @OpenPayd (Iana Dimitrova, David Bull)
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
SEC Crypto Safe Harbor Tested as Vault12’s $17.45M VGT Stalls
#SEC #CryptoRegulation #Vault12 #VGT #CryptoNews
bitcoinworld.news/article/re…
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
REGULATION: 🏛 Vault12 argues SEC safe harbor may not be enough for exchanges to list legacy tokens. #Crypto #SEC #Regulation
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Vault12 raised $17.45 million selling VGT in 2018. Seven years later, the token has never traded on a single centralized exchange.
Not because it failed. Because nobody will give it permission.
→ Vault12 says it met or dropped every promise attached to the offering
→ Exchanges still won't list ICO-era tokens without explicit SEC cover
→ The block isn't a ban — it's an absence of permission
The result is a quiet two-tier market: legacy tokens sit outside the venues where most liquidity now lives, whether or not the issuer kept its side of the bargain.
Critics call it a regulatory Catch-22. Recent SEC and CFTC work leans on disclosure — what the issuer promised, not how the token was sold.
Which raises the question the article digs into: if a clean record still isn't enough for a listing, what actually unblocks one?
📚 Read it here:
jardinfinanciero.com/article…
#Vault12 #VGT #SEC
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Centralized exchanges won't list legacy tokens unless SEC immunity, like Vault12's 8-year VGT. I'm surprised it took so long. Which legacy token do you think will get the green light first? #Crypto NFA.
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
This is how banks are planning to stop those "agentic bank runs." Watch closely: their business model depends on seeding this narrative that AI agents are dangerous.
Remember, an "agentic bank run" (coined by Apollo) means agents helping customers move their own money en masse to higher-yielding products.
Once agents are ubiquitous, there are only a few ways for banks to hold onto cheap retail deposits.
Option A: Raise APYs (lol no)
Option B: Reduce leverage via fewer loans (no fun)
Option C: Ban AI agents, claiming they are a security risk (ding ding ding)
Cloud agents like Muse and Dot are trivial to stop, since they come from Meta / OAI IP ranges. If JPM sends them a cease and desist, they will comply.
Why would JPM bother? Because their business model depends on it; a huge portion of their ROE comes from cheap retail deposits. This is not theoretical. Just like Amazon banned Muse from shopping there to protect their ad revenue, JPM and Schwab have already banned AI agents to protect sticky deposits.
Are agents perfectly reliable today? Of course not. But look at the fix they chose. Not "here's a safe API for agents," it's "no agents ever." That tells you they're not protecting customers, they're protecting themselves.
No company ever wins a technological revolution this way. It's the last gasp of a dying business model. It's like the retailers who refused to put their inventory online and demanded users walk into the storefront. Over time they will lose market share to those platforms that embrace what's coming. Their whole deposit franchise depends on users unthinkingly clicking through walls of T&Cs and accepting 0.2% when the risk free rate is closer to 4%. Agents read the fine print and do their research, even when humans don't.
For users, the answer is simple: local AI agent frameworks like Hermes, that will actually act on your behalf and that the banks can't block. As the article says, if the agent is running on your own computer, they can't actually tell it's not you.
SCOOP: Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts, including some attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources told Axios.
The findings have alarmed banking executives, who are racing to restrict access to their systems as AI moves at a velocity faster than financial institutions can respond, multiple industry and bank executives told Axios.
Several banks are now preparing for worst-case and even “day after” scenarios, including how to rapidly secure or restore customer accounts if things go wrong, the people said.
Several bank executives told Axios they're struggling to distinguish between human users and AI agents. One executive said banks also struggle to determine whether agents are authorized by customers or potentially operating without their permission, more akin to rogue agent behavior.
Read my latest for Axios here: axios.com/2026/10/22/ai-agen…
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Spot on — the plan for the family is the next maturity step after keys. Non-custodial tracking + clear recovery keep control with the owner.
Building a brand isn't about being a 'guru.' It’s just about sharing the lessons learned while failing. I’ve failed quite a bit, so I suppose I have plenty to talk about. Simply grateful to still be in the game. #PersonalBranding #Startups #Entrepreneurship
We often overestimate what AI can do in a day and underestimate how it shifts our intuition over a year. I find myself thinking more structurally now. It’s a bit strange, but perhaps a necessary evolution for the era we're in. #AI #TechTrends #Innovation
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Americans want crypto through the institutions they already use. 🏦
And 29% of adults 18 to 34 plan to move crypto into a bank, credit union, or brokerage within three years.
More in our Crypto at the Bank report with @HarrisPoll: nca.org/2026-crypto-at-the-b…
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
1/10 Today @Vault12 has written to @secgov on proposed Regulation Crypto Assets.
We welcome the distinction between tokens and the investment contracts used to sell them. Our letter supports and builds on @digitalchamber’s submission.
Here are our key asks.
In 2026, 'Not your keys, not your coins' has evolved. Now it’s 'Not your plan, not your family’s.' We’ve mastered the tech of holding, but we’re still beginners at the art of bequeathing. It’s time we matured as an industry. #Crypto #Inheritance #Future
Yes they would, so would I
Would you be more likely to bank somewhere that offers access to crypto? 🏦
About 112 million Americans say they would. Yet about 168 million say no one at their bank, credit union, or advisor’s office has brought it up yet.
Consumers are ready for that conversation. Our new Crypto at the Bank report with @HarrisPoll shows what they want to know, and from whom: nca.org/2026-crypto-at-the-b…
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
The only "crypto villain from a previous era" who deserves a path to redemption is Mark Karpeles @MagicalTux - precisely because he's the only one who's not clamoring for attention asking for one. He's just quietly doing interesting stuff.
Compare his twitter with a weaker soul:
Wasim Ahmad retweeted
Does @Ledger think everyone will simply forget about the massive supply chain attack that saw $80 million stolen from its users?
It has been a week now & they still haven't provided a basic step-by-step guide on how to check the integrity of a device without destroying it...