When I was a sparring partner for professional boxers many, many years ago, I was taught to be wary of the jab. It is a tactic used to distract an opponent while setting him up for a devastating power punch that takes him down for the count.
Biden is throwing jabs.
The power punch is a little noticed Executive Order with the innocuous number 14067 and its title, “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”
An author should be pleased to see his thesis bolstered by events. Yet since writing The Coming of Neo-Feudalism in 2020, I have not found any joy in the continued growth of the West’s class divides, as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in ever fewer hands. The good news is that the working and middle classes are not yet out for the count, and are showing welcome signs of pushback against both state and corporate power.
All these projects to digitize the world are also programs to digitize you, to turn you into a virtual rather than real human being.
The most egregious act that brought the world’s attention to the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy was when Justin Trudeau ordered banks to freeze the accounts not only of peaceful protesters but also of their financial supporters and even some people related only by association, such as ex-spouses. This move inspired so much outrage that, in a somewhat unprecedented fashion, this feckless prime minister was later excoriated to his face by some members of the European Parliament. In a blistering speech that went viral, MEP Mislav Kolakušić of Croatia declaimed, “You block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes,” and so forth.
Croatian Member of European Parliament and former judge Mislav Kolakusic calls out Justin Trudeau during his visit to the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday:
“To you these may be liberal methods. For many citizens of the world, it is dictatorship of the worst kind.” pic.twitter.com/3HRXUrnErC
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) March 24, 2022
Nishad Singh, the former director of engineering at now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has agreed to plead guilty to US criminal charges, his lawyer said in court on Tuesday, as US prosecutors ramp up their investigation into members of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle.
Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder, was charged in December with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors say he stole billions in FTX customer deposits to plug losses at his hedge fund Alameda Research, and lied to investors and lenders about his companies’ financial condition.
Former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of befallen crypto exchange FTX, has been charged with four new criminal counts including allegations of illegal political donations and bank fraud, an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court revealed on Thursday—tacking on to the eight charges already facing the former wunderkind as he gears up for trial later this year.
These are some serious charges.
Gary Wang and Sam Bankman-Fried are offering dueling accounts of the FTX fiasco and of who’s ultimately to blame.
They’d come a long way together, from teenage mathletes to MIT frat brothers to crypto billionaires.
Now the feds were closing in on both — and one was going to turn on the other.
“We can make this work,” Sam Bankman-Fried said over Signal, an encrypted messaging app.
Gary Wang didn’t reply.
This says Bankman-Fried is toast. How long he actually remains in jail is something we just have to wait on.
A Manhattan federal judge on Thursday suggested he’d lock disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried up pending trial if the accused fraudster continues to improperly use electronic devices while out on bail.
Judge Lewis Kaplan asked federal prosecutors and Bankman-Fried’s attorneys why he should allow the alleged crypto crook to return to his parents’ California house, where he’d be surrounded by unmonitored electronic devices.
He’s displayed enough arrogance to be stupid.
A federal judge slapped a new bail restriction on Sam Bankman-Fried Tuesday, after finding out the disgraced FTX founder has been using a virtual private network (VPN) to watch football in recent weeks.
Prosecutors filed a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan Monday night, alerting him that they discovered Bankman-Fried used a VPN to access the internet on Jan. 29 and Feb. 12, raising concerns that his use of a private network prevents them from monitoring his behavior online.
Central banks are creating their own surveillance state
Should we really be surprised that the Treasury and Bank of England are exploring whether to launch a state-issued digital pound? Sunak, after all, was the chancellor who first floated the idea of backing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) — already dubbed “Britcoin”. Nor was he alone: 11 countries, including China, Nigeria, The Bahamas and Jamaica, have already launched their own digital currencies, while more than 100 others, representing over 95% of global GDP, are deciding whether to follow suit. In the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has launched a pilot programme; the European Central Bank hopes to make a decision about the creation of a digital euro this autumn.
A FILING IN FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings is shedding light on the true extent of the crypto-trading powerhouse’s influence-peddling operation. Last week, FTX filed its creditor matrix, a document that lists former vendors and investors to the company.
The list includes nearly a dozen public relations experts — specialists who generate positive spin in the media on behalf of clients — as well as political consultants, think tanks, and trade groups.
Sometimes, the money went directly to political operations; Majority Forward, a dark-money group designed to elect Senate Democrats, received cash. In some cases, the hired guns, such as PR firms, were paid directly for their services. In others, the groups that received donations maintain that they are independent, but had interests aligned with FTX.
h/t DM
Hollywood celebrities looking to make a quick buck endorsing cryptocurrency or NFTs are now being told to think twice as angry consumers who experienced losses are taking the stars to court.
Celebrities including Madonna, Justin Bieber, Larry David, and NBC’s Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon joined the crypto bandwagon only to find themselves defendants in class action lawsuits. Even Kim Kardashian was sued over EthereumMax, though she later settled the matter out of court.
There were a lot of rug pulls involving “minor” influencers etc it will be interesting to see how these celebrity trials work out.
A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday ordered accused crypto schemer Sam Bankman-Fried not to contact any current or ex-employees of FTX, his former digital currency company, while he is out on bail in the sprawling fraud case.
Judge Lewis Kaplan issued the order at the request of federal prosecutors and will hear arguments from Bankman-Fried’s attorneys about the restrictions during a hearing on Feb. 7.
In a letter to Kaplan, prosecutors revealed that Bankman-Fried sent a message to FTX’s current general counsel on the encrypted messaging app Signal weeks after he was indicted in Manhattan federal court.
This was a blatant attempt to influence a witness, Sammy must still think he is untouchable.
Did American taxpayers, via a pandemic-era economic relief program, help prop up the great crypto gold rush of 2020-21?
A group of researchers at Washington University in Saint Louis make a compelling case that they did in a new study suggesting that a not-insignificant amount of the pandemic relief money doled out in 2020 as part of the Paycheck Protection Program was used by recipients to speculate on cryptocurrencies.
NEW YORK, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried on Saturday urged a U.S. judge not to ban the indicted FTX cryptocurrency executive from communicating with former colleagues as part of his bail, saying prosecutors “sandbagged” the process to put their client in the “worst possible light.”
The lawyers were responding to a Friday night request by federal prosecutors that Bankman-Fried not be allowed to talk with most employees of FTX or his Alameda Research hedge fund without lawyers present, or use the encrypted messaging apps Signal or Slack and potentially delete messages automatically.
Because he’s a connected little snot …
“The fact that an offshore hedge fund that was basically a crypto firm was buying a stake in a tiny bank for multiples of its stated book value should have raised massive red flags for the F.D.I.C., state regulators and the Federal Reserve,” said Camden Fine, a bank industry consultant who used to head the Independent Community Bankers of America. “It’s just astonishing that all of this got approved.”
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that the disgraced cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried had tried to contact a potential witness in his criminal case, and they asked a judge to impose new bail conditions limiting his ability to communicate with former colleagues.
In a court filing, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said Mr. Bankman-Fried sent messages over email and the encrypted messaging app Signal this month to the general counsel of the U.S. arm of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, has been charged with fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations linked to the implosion of FTX last year.
