A married couple nicknamed “Bitcoin Bonnie and Crypto Clyde” have pleaded guilty to laundering $4.5 billion (£3.5bn) in stolen cryptocurrency.
Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein were arrested in New York last year after police linked their lavish lifestyle to a crypto heist, in what the US Justice Department called its “largest financial seizure ever”.
The Justice Department managed to recover £2.8bn out of the stash of some 120,000 bitcoin, which is today worth £3.5bn.
Austrian leader backs far-right idea of enshrining cash in constitution
VIENNA, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Austria’s conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer wants the right to use cash enshrined in the constitution, he told Austrian media in remarks published on Friday, an idea the far-right Freedom Party has been pushing for years.
Most opinion polls show the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) in first place with a clear lead over the opposition Social Democrats and Nehammer’s conservatives, who are in a two-party coalition with the left-wing Greens. The current parliament runs until autumn of next year.
Remember how Freeland went schoolgirl giggly over freezing the bank accounts of people she didn’t like?
A Digital Currency will make it that much easier both to track and unperson you.
Freeland likely orgasm’s at the prospect of such totalitarian control.
The Bank of Canada is asking for your thoughts on Digital Currency which I’m sure is just a bothersome pantomime of democratic inclusiveness.
h/t Editor
The Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped a campaign finance charge against disgraced former crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) on Wednesday night, according to a court document from the Southern District of New York.
Authorities assert that SBF, co-founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, and its associates, utilized customer deposits for $90 million in campaign contributions to around 300 candidates or political action committees, according to The New York Times. The DOJ’s letter to the New York court states that it is not pursuing the charge because The Bahamas did not plan to extradite SBF to the U.S. on it.
Talk about a technicality.
🚨BREAKING: The U.S. Department of Justice Dropped Charges of Campaign Finance Violations Against Crypto Scammer FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
DOJ just sent a strong message that scamming people of millions is not a crime as long your donations end up supporting Democrats and… pic.twitter.com/g3gVwQrn0f
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) July 27, 2023
h/t Mauser
Disgraced FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been slapped with a gag order preventing him from speaking publicly about his blockbuster trial in October, as prosecutors lobbied a federal judge to jail him until the case is heard.
The 31-year-old former crypto billionaire was back in a Manhattan courthouse Wednesday after allegedly trying to tamper with the testimony of the prosecution’s star witness, his ex-girlfriend and former business partner Caroline Ellison.
Prosecutors alleged that he leaked intimate messages from Ellison to the New York Times to discredit her, because she is expected to testify against him during his trial.
Sam Bankman-Fried paid his legal defense team $10 million using funds that were stolen from FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research — and which had been gifted to the 31-year-old crypto crook’s father, a new lawsuit alleges.
The complaint — filed in Delaware bankruptcy court on Thursday — divulged that a so-called “Bankman Gift Transfer” for $10 million was made from Bankman-Fried’s FTX account “to his father’s personal account on the FTX US exchange.”
“On information and belief, Bankman-Fried’s father has been using this ‘gift’ to finance Bankman-Fried’s criminal defense,” the documents stated.
Emulating China’s digital currency threatens our civil liberties
The West continues to emulate the authoritarian tendencies of the Chinese state at a rapid clip. We copied various aspects of Xi Jinping’s Covid-19 pandemic response. Our police forces have begun rolling out facial recognition surveillance cameras. Now, it appears as though the introduction of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is next.
The establishment are trying to force me out of the UK by closing my bank accounts.
I have been given no explanation or recourse as to why this is happening to me.
This is serious political persecution at the very highest level of our system.
If they can do it to me, they… pic.twitter.com/O4xQ1h79ub
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 29, 2023
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is working on a platform that would allow various central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to interoperate on a global scale, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told participants at a conference.
“CBDCs should not be fragmented national propositions … To have more efficient and fairer transactions, we need systems that connect countries—we need interoperability,” Georgieva said in Rabat, Morocco, on June 19.
“For this reason at the IMF, we are working on the concept of a global CBDC platform,” she added.
A lawsuit against celebrities who promote now-worthless crypto tokens is creating alarms among Hollywood figures as they realize they could be found liable if followers take their advice.
A Los Angeles district judge, Michael Fitzgerald, refused Tuesday to dismiss a lawsuit accusing celebrity Kim Kardashian and two former professional athletes, boxer Floyd Mayweather and NBA player Paul Pierce, of promoting EthereumMax tokens in 2021. According to the ruling, there is proof that celebrities had influence over their followers when they endorsed the tokens.
This was pure scam.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the United States, on Tuesday, claiming that the company broke securities law by not registering as a broker.
The nation’s top securities regulators filed the lawsuit a day after it sued Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency trading exchange, for mishandling customer funds and lying to American regulators and investors about its operations.
Coinbase has made billions facilitating the sale of crypto assets, the S.E.C. said in a statement, but deprived investors of significant protections.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly operating an illegal exchange in the US and mishandling billions of dollars in money.
The lawsuit – which is the latest action taken by regulators to get crypto firms to comply with US law – was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia on Monday, and named Changpeng Zhao as a defendant.
Zhao is the founder and controlling shareholder of the cryptocurrency. Wall Street regulator SEC filed 13 charges against Binance for allegedly mishandling billions in customer funds, as well as lying to regulators and investors about its operations.
Interesting as Zhao is blamed/credited with bringing down Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX.
A “diary” belonging to Caroline Ellison, the ex-Alameda Research CEO and former girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, has reportedly emerged as a vital piece of evidence in the disgraced FTX founder’s upcoming fraud trial.
The personal notebook is part of a massive trove of documents and other insider materials that prosecutors have compiled as they build their case against Bankman-Fried, who faces trial in October, the New York Times reported, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.
YOU don’t have to be Ebenezer Scrooge to want to handle your own money. The prudent management of income and expenditure is a necessary and commendable skill in our affluent 21st century, and a basic element of personal independence. Yet our governments are hell-bent on removing it from us for ever.
As the Bank of Canada seeks consultation from Canadians on its design of a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC), digital privacy experts are warning that the technology could be used by governments to track payments and freeze dissidents’ bank accounts.
“CBDCs could be a nightmare for democracy, for civil liberties, and potentially all sorts of human rights,” Ori Freiman, a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University’s Digital Society Lab, who is researching the responsible implementation of emerging technologies, said in an interview.
Chrystia Freeland is surely the most diligent finance minister this country has ever had — so busy that she can spare an hour of her day on Tuesday to appear at the finance committee to talk about the budget implementation bill, but not a minute more.
The Conservative MPs on the committee have ground proceedings to a halt of late, demanding that the finance minister spend a couple of hours answering questions on an omnibus bill they say amends 51 other acts, Freeland having declined three previous invitations.
