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Former President Donald Trump’s latest business venture sees him return to the world of crypto, once again leveraging a surprising network that he has come to favor within the space: Polygon. Trump has announced a non-fungible token (NFT) collection, portraying his now-infamous mug shot from Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, minted via the Layer 2, Ethereum-interoperable blockchain network, which currently has an $8.3 billion market cap. “Former President Donald Trump has backed (Polygon) not once, not twice, but three times total in 2023, making a bold statement into 2024,” explained TheStreetCrypto’s Austin Arnold in the video above. “And this is...

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations, the government said on Tuesday, a stunning blow to the most powerful and influential figure in the global crypto industry. Binance itself also pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines and restitution [and much, much more]

Former FTX general counsel Can Sun, who was a key witness in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial, and former Alameda Research software developer Armani Ferrante are building a Dubai-based exchange called Backpack Exchange. Two former colleagues of recently convicted Sam Bankman-Fried are building a new crypto exchange just days after their former CEO was found guilty on seven charges of fraud. FTX’s former general counsel, Can Sun, and former Alameda Research software developer Armani Ferrante have teamed up to start Trek Labs, a Dubai-based company that recently obtained a license from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, or VARA, which regulates digital...

By day, Brian Krewson is a technical expert at computing giant Oracle. But by night he’s Mr. Poto, a fire-breathing, stilt-walking party entertainer, happy to perform at birthdays, weddings and corporate picnics. A Facebook photo from Halloween 2020 shows Krewson dressed in full methlab attire as a remarkably convincing Walter White, the infamous drug trafficker played by Brian Cranston in Breaking Bad. According to a Justice Department DOC, Krewson's resemblance to that character extends beyond appearance. The agency alleges that Krewson helped store and launder $54 million worth of cryptocurrency for two friends, Christopher Castelluzzo and Luke Atwell, who were...

For two years, the cryptocurrency world has been waiting to see how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would implement the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Put simply, this law established new reporting requirements that risked setting a de facto ban on cryptocurrency mining and exposing millions of Americans to new felony crimes. The good news is that the IRS’s nearly 300-page proposal is not quite as bad as it could have been under the law. However, that is far from saying it is good policy. As citizens, companies, and consultants finish crafting their comment letters ahead of the October 30...

Sam Bankman-Fried scheduled a number of high-profile meetings with political power-players a short time before his cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed. The former billionaire, 31, was set to sit down with former President Bill Clinton, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Yasir Al Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, shortly before his crypto empire came crashing down in November 2022. Evidence of the meetings was presented by prosecutors on Tuesday at Bankman-Fried's fraud trial in Manhattan. The former crypto whiz faces up to 115 years in prison for allegedly siphoning FTX client funds to prop up his hedge...

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a crypto licensing bill on Friday, set to take effect in July 2025. Considered California's answer to New York's "BitLicense," the Digital Financial Assets Law faced heavy industry criticism but was passed by the U.S. state's Assembly in September 2022. The law requires California's Department of Financial Protection (DFPI) and Innovation to create a regulatory framework for crypto. The framework includes a licensing regime and gives the department enforcement and rulemaking authority over the sector. The DFPI also gets an 18-month implementation period to ensure "the adopted regulatory framework can be thoughtfully tailored to address...

The suspect in the shooting of a beloved father-of-four in Portland is a futures fund manager with a weighty arrest history - who also jets around the country giving blockchain lectures at conventions. Geoffrey Edward Hammond, 46, runs Aequantium LLC, claims to be of Australian descent, and also comes from a family of entrepreneurs with a $125million fortune. For unknown reasons, Hammond also changed his named from Jeffrey Edward Mandalis in recent years, court records show. He was driving a black Mercedes Benz and stopped in front of the Moxy Hotel in Portland, blocking traffic, last week. After getting into...

Caroline Ellison, a top deputy of Sam Bankman-Fried, testified the FTX founder ordered her and others to commit criminally fraudulent acts that contributed to the collapse of the exchange last year...Ellison, a onetime romantic partner of Bankman-Fried who ran his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, is perhaps the most central witness for federal prosecutors. They secured her cooperation as part of a guilty plea in December...

Update from @SBF_FTX #SBFTrial: Questioning Gary Wang, co-founder of #FTX : Q. Did you commit financial crimes while working at FTX? A. Yes. Q. What types of crimes did you commit? A. Wire fraud, securities fraud, and commodities fraud. Q. Did you commit these crimes by yourself or with other people? A. With other people. Q. Who were the main people you committed these crimes with? A. Sam Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh, and Caroline Ellison. Q. You're talking about Alameda Research? A. Yes. Q. Okay. We'll come back to it in a minute. When you say withdrew unlimited amounts of funds,...

'He was using his company FTX to commit fraud on a massive scale and the money he was spending to build his empire was money he was stealing from FTX customers. 'Sam Bankman-Fried was committing a massive fraud and taking billions of dollars from thousands of victims.' 'While the defendant told customers they could deposit money and FTX would keep it safe, in reality he was taking those deposits and spending them for himself 'He spent the money on lavish houses for himself, his parents and his friends'. Rehn said that Bankman-Fried spent the money to meet celebrities and to...

Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu was arrested in Singapore while trying to leave the country. Su Zhu, the co-founder of the collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), was arrested in Singapore on Friday. Zhu was taken into custody while attempting to leave the country from Singapore’s Changi Airport, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Teneo, the liquidation firm in charge of liquidating 3AC’s assets, says it received a committal order against Zhu after he failed to comply with a court order that compelled him to cooperate with the liquidation process. That committal order directs Singaporean police to arrest...

"Sam's thinking, We could pay Donald Trump not to run for president. Like, how much would it take?" Lewis said. "He did get an answer. He was floated - there was a number that was kicking around. And the number that was kicking around when I was talking to Sam about this was $5 billion. Sam was not sure that number came directly from Trump."

Tom Brady was paid $55 million for doing about a week’s worth of work total over a three-year period by disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, according to a bestselling author. Michael Lewis, who wrote “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon,” told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the former FTX head Bankman-Fried, whose federal trial on fraud and money laundering charges is set to begin in Manhattan on Tuesday, splurged on endorsements from Brady, Stephen Curry, and Larry David. Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty, oversaw a $32 billion empire that collapsed after his firm allegedly used customer...

With the so-called "King of Crypto" about to go on trial for multiple fraud charges, one British man tells how the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's company lost him a fortune. Until the final collapse, Sunil Kavuri hoped that Sam Bankman-Fried could turn things around. The King of Crypto's empire was faltering but while others panicked, Kavuri remained calm. Experience in trading for banks and investing his money in crypto made him hardened to market dramas. Plus Bankman-Fried - the self-appointed saviour of crypto - kept telling the world that everything would be fine. But then the message popped up on...

The Group of 20 leaders have agreed to a plan to eventually impose digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations, despite fears that governments will use them to monitor their peoples' spending and crush dissent. The G20, which is currently under India’s presidency, adopted a final declaration on the subject over the weekend in New Delhi. The meeting, which included the world’s leading economies, announced last week that they had agreed to build the necessary infrastructure to implement digital currencies and IDs.

The Federal Reserve has officially reported a loss of $57 billion for the first six months of 2023. Quite a number! So the “Federal Reserve Banks Combined Quarterly Financial Report as of June 30, 2023” (CQFR)—a little-known document—is especially notable for its red ink. We can anticipate an annual loss of over $100 billion for 2023 and for the losses to continue into 2024. 1 How does a central bank, especially the world’s greatest and most important central bank, lose tens of billions of dollars in six months? An average person, influenced by the mystique of the Fed, might understandably...

Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty Tuesday to an amended indictment alleging fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges, appearing in court for the first time since his bail was revoked and he was sent to a Brooklyn jail to await trial. Lawyers for the former crypto billionaire, who is vegan, said the detention center is not accommodating his diet and failing to regularly dispense his prescription Adderall. “He’s literally now subsisting on bread and water, which are the only things he’s served that he can eat, and sometimes peanut butter,” his attorney, Mark Cohen, told the court. Magistrate Judge Netburn said...

The government will set unlimited fines for banks that fail to protect access to cash, the Treasury said, in a major move against the march towards a cashless society campaigner Nigel Farage has called a “big win”. Banks in the United Kingdom will have to provide free-to-access cash withdrawals and deposits within one mile of a person’s home in urban areas and within three miles in rural areas according to new laws and rules being rolled out by the government to protect cash. Yet some pro-cash campaigners point out the change doesn’t go far enough, as retailers are still perfectly...

A federal judge revoked FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail and sent him to jail Friday, ending a monthslong battle between the Justice Department and the onetime crypto entrepreneur over his behavior while awaiting trial on fraud charges. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said at a hearing in New York that Bankman-Fried pushed the limits of his bail conditions repeatedly. “There is probable cause to believe that the defendant has attempted to tamper with witnesses at least twice,” Kaplan said. The judge said he would allow Bankman-Fried’s lawyers to request that the defendant be allowed to spend time in his lawyers’...