The Bank of Canada (BoC) will not be introducing a digital currency any time soon.
After researching and holding public consultations on the idea of a central bank digital currency, the BoC said it will be shifting its focus away from the concept.
Freeland is crying.
A few thoughts on how Americans thought about the crypto trial of the century.
When I first started chasing around after Sam Bankman-Fried, I had no idea where he might lead me. I certainly had no sense that I’d wind up with a ringside seat to a financial catastrophe. I had no slant or angle, much less a theory of the case. I was just curious about Sam and his bizarre situation. Inside of three years, he’d gone from socially and emotionally isolated 25-year-old with an upper-middle-class bank account to leader of a small army of math nerds and (according to Forbes magazine) not merely the world’s richest person under 30 but maybe the fastest creator of wealth in recorded history. The leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties solicited his money and his thoughts. The heads of big Wall Street banks felt a need to know him, and the leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists felt a need to invest in him. Tom Brady was hanging out with him, Taylor Swift was negotiating to endorse his crypto exchange, Shaquille O’Neal wanted to partner with him to solve the homeless problem in the Bahamas, and Orlando Bloom was asking to play him in a movie. He’d gone from having no friends as a child to having too many as an adult without ever developing a capacity for friendship.
A consumer group is urgently calling on the federal government to follow other jurisdictions in the U.S and Europe and bring in legislation to stem the slide toward a cashless society.
Only 10 per cent of transactions in Canada today are done using cash, according to Carlos Castiblanco, an economist with the group Option Consommateurs.
“There is a need to protect cash right now before more merchants start refusing [it],” Castiblanco recently told CBC Radio’s Ontario Today.
Ryan Salame, a top executive at the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on Tuesday, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried’s circle of advisers at FTX to receive prison time.
Mr. Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Bankman-Fried, the exchange’s founder, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign finance law violation and a charge of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022.
Mr. Salame’s sentence exceeded the five to seven years that prosecutors had recommended. Defense lawyers had requested an 18-month sentence.
Sam Bankman-Fried is going to be transferred from a New York lock-up to one in California, against his wishes, according to a report.
The convicted crypto-cook – who is appealing his 25-year prison sentence – is in the process of leaving Brooklyn Federal Metropolitan Detention Center for a prison in Mendota, California, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
YouTube videos and quick Google searches.
That is how then 23-year-old Aiden Pleterski, self-proclaimed “Crypto King,” described how he learned about financial markets, foreign exchange and cryptocurrencies.
It was 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 24, 2022 and Pleterski was answering questions from the lawyer for the accounting firm overseeing his bankruptcy after investors claimed he had defrauded them out of tens of millions of dollars.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was this week sentenced to four months in an American prison for failing to take adequate measures against cybercriminals and terrorist groups on his exchange. For some crypto enthusiasts, there may yet be a silver lining to this sad episode. As crypto goes from being a buccaneering innovator in finance to one of the grown-ups in the room, the increased scrutiny from regulators will weed out some bad apples, in turn enabling a cleaned-up sector to move forward.
However, the incident underscores a tension at the heart of crypto. Created by libertarians angry at the bank bailouts that followed the 2008 global financial crisis, it was originally intended as a new form of money that would operate outside the formal system. Along with new dark web spaces that sprang up around that time, such as Silk Road, its whole purpose was to create an autonomous space where a new economy could emerge. If a few bad apples used it, that was a price worth paying for sticking it to the man. After all, the 2008 crash had revealed plenty of villains in the regulated banking sector.
Sam Bankman-Fried, facing the prospect of spending much of his adult life behind bars, on Thursday appealed his conviction and 25-year prison sentence for stealing $8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.
Defense lawyer Marc Mukasey had announced plans for the appeal to the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals during Bankman-Fried’s March 28 sentencing hearing. The 32-year-old former billionaire crypto wunderkind was convicted in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in what federal prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.
Almost 70 years ago, John Kenneth Galbraith explained that during a bull market there is a period when an embezzler enjoys his ill-gotten gains, but the victim does not yet know he has lost out. Think of rich Europeans who invested with Bernie Madoff, and spent their summers in Saint Tropez and their winters in Saint Moritz believing that Madoff was compounding their assets at a steady 12% a year. While the “bezzle” was on, the economies of Saint Moritz and Saint Tropez hummed along nicely, and the world seemed better off. In this interval, there were two engines of “unfounded” economic activity: Madoff bought watches, yachts and holiday homes, while the investors he was conning spent as if their balance sheets were still rock solid.
After playing a key role in securing Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction, three former members of his inner circle must now await their fate on fraud charges related to the multi-billion dollar collapse FTX.
Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang admitted their roles in defrauding customers and clients of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and its sister company Alameda Research of an estimated $8 billion and are due to be sentenced in the coming months.
All three of the former crypto executives provided damning testimony at Bankman-Fried’s trial in return for leniency.
Sam Bankman-Fried has learned nothing, and I’m not sure any of the rest of us have, either.
At his sentencing, I sat several rows behind Bankman-Fried, clad in prison khaki and clanking faintly when he walked from the shackles on his feet, while he gave his statement to the court. “I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” Bankman-Fried said. “I failed everyone I cared about.”
I assume SBF is hoping that his appeal will be helped if he refuses to admit to the crimes committed or he’s just an entitled rich kid without boundaries.
Probably not a good plan when the Judge cites 3 instances of perjury during sentencing.
I am curious about Caroline Ellison’s conviction, one account suggested she may get off with no jail time at all.
Judge Kaplan: It is the judgment of the court that you are sentenced to 240 months then consecutive 60 [etc] for a total of 300 months [25 years]
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) March 28, 2024
Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency mogul who was convicted of fraud, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday, capping an extraordinary saga that upended the multi-trillion-dollar crypto industry and became a cautionary tale of greed and hubris.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentence was shorter than the 40 to 50 years that federal prosecutors had recommended, but above the six-and-a-half-year sentence requested by the defense lawyers. A federal probation officer had recommended 100 years, just under the maximum possible penalty of 110 years behind bars.
I thought he would go down harder the Judge really ripped into him
‘Remorseless’ Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison — as judge rips him as power-obsessed scammer
A Manhattan judge ripped Sam Bankman-Fried as a “remorseless” scammer obsessed with political power as he sentenced the fallen crypto mogul to 25 years in prison Thursday — five months after he was found guilty of stealing more than $8 billion of funds from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said the 32-year-old convicted fraudster “presented himself as the good guy” all in favor of “appropriate regulation of the crypto industry” — but it was just an “act.”
Judge Kaplan: I find the Mr. Bankman-Fried gave perjured testimony at trial – he falsely testified that until the Fall of 2022 he had no knowledge that Alameda had spent FTX customer funds. He falsely testified that he first learned of the $8 billion in Oct 2022
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) March 28, 2024
Well done.
Crypto Crook Sam Bankman-Fried Sentencing Set For Tomorrow pic.twitter.com/1VWK1QrNAB
— @stevenvoiceover (@stevenvoiceover) March 27, 2024
In a downtown Manhattan courtroom on the morning of 28 March, tech wunderkind turned fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, unrepentant even after trial and conviction, will finally learn his fate.
Bankman-Fried, who founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was found guilty on 2 November 2023 of seven counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money.
The fallen bitcoin booster was found to have siphoned billions in customer funds into FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, to keep it solvent – and lined his pockets with hapless clients’ money, spurring the entities’ collapse.
The judge is no fan of SBF or his lawyers repeatedly slapping both down for SBF’s evasive testimony and the lawyers time wasting efforts.
Given his connections to the Democrats even if he receives a long sentence this week I would not be surprised to see him “pardoned” after only a few years.
FTX CEO: “The harm was vast. The remorse is nonexistent.”
The CEO of FTX Trading, John Ray, sent a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan Wednesday to correct what he called “callously” and “demonstrably false” claims that disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried made in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence for crimes including defrauding FTX customers.
In a sentencing memo, Bankman-Fried asked the court to drastically slash his prison sentence from what he considered a “grotesque” 110-year maximum to five to six years. Prosecutors have suggested the sentence should be between 40 and 50 years, but Bankman-Fried claimed such a sentence painted him as a “depraved supervillain,” Bloomberg reported.
The lightest sentence was appropriate, Bankman-Fried claimed, because the “most reasonable estimate of loss” and “harm” to customers, lenders, and investors is “zero.”
Federal prosecutors said on Friday that Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul, should receive a 40 to 50-year prison sentence for his conviction on fraud charges.
The prosecutors outlined the sentencing recommendation in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28, during which Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will decide his fate. He faces a maximum possible penalty of 110 years.
“Justice requires that he receive a prison sentence commensurate with the extraordinary dimensions of his crimes,” the prosecutors said in a 116-page sentencing memo to the judge.
