Free Republic

It all happened overnight and in a matter of minutes. Ben Zhou, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, made a series of routine transfers from his home computer. A short while later, his company called to inform him that his reserves of Ethereum, the second most-used cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, worth $1.5 billion, had vanished. By then, the ethers had already been transferred to thousands of other people’s digital wallets. Bybit had just suffered the largest theft in history. Five days later, the FBI confirmed what some analysts suspected from the outset: the attack was the work of Lazarus, a hacking...

Are you ready for the Circle IPO? The “stablecoin” giant just filed to go public. It’s aiming for a valuation between $4 billion and $5 billion and plans to list on the NYSE as early as June under the ticker CRCL. It will be the biggest crypto IPO since Coinbase (COIN) went public back in 2021. Circle is the company behind USD Coin (USDC)— the world’s second-biggest stablecoin. I’ll share my favorite way to profit from the rise of stablecoins in a minute. First, let me quickly break down what stablecoins are and why they’re a huge disruption to the...

Bitcoin rose on Friday after China retaliated against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, while stocks continued to crater following their worst day since 2020. The price of the flagship cryptocurrency rose more than 2% to $83,959.19, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as much as $84,717.51. Most of the major cryptocurrencies were also in the green Friday. Solana and dogecoin jumped about 6% each. Most crypto-related stocks fell again, however, with Coinbase down about 6%. The bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy advanced nearly 4%. Meanwhile, spot gold fell 2.4% to $3,037.30 an ounce, while U.S. gold futures were down 2.05% at $3,057.90....

Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Jessica Aber, who was found dead at the age of 43 by Virginia authorities on Saturday, was at the helm of high-profile investigations into intelligence leaks, allegations of war crimes against Russian-linked individuals and people suspected of providing sensitive U.S. technology to Moscow before she stepped down at the start of the year. Why It Matters Aber, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, resigned in January after President Donald Trump was inaugurated. She had risen to lead one of the most important federal prosecutor's offices and roughly 300 prosecutors, civil...

In just seven short years, Malone Lam Yu Xuan went from being a student in a secondary school in Choa Chu Kang to being dubbed crypto whizz-kid by some in the US in 2023. Many who saw his spending spree were amazed a 19-year-old could afford large mansions, a fleet of expensive cars and luxury clothes. In truth, Lam was living off the millions in crypto he stole from various investors, he later told investigators in the US. This was before August 2024, when he allegedly got involved in the theft of Bitcoin valued at more than US$240 million (S$320...

Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent declares it during Senate hearing for his confirmation. CBDCs are Fascist Coin. A CBDC would effectively give the government total control over each person's money individually....a level of control even Orwell never dreamed of.

Sam Bankman-Fried's revealing interview where he spoke about being imprisoned with Diddy and Luigi Mangione has earned the FTX founder a stay in solitary confinement. The convicted cryptocurrency king is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud at New York's Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn alongside his famous fellow inmates. -snip- 'Have you made friends there? Are you hanging with Diddy? I think he's in there with you,' Carlson asked. A grinning Bankman-Fried replied, 'He is.. he's been kind. I've made some friends, it's a weird environment. It's a combination of a few other high-profile cases and a lot of alleged...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As part of an ongoing effort to lead America into a safer and more prosperous future, President Donald Trump announced on Friday the creation of a Strategic U.S. Hawk Tuah Coin Reserve. The announcement came on the heels of Trump's previous order to create a similar reserve of Bitcoin, with sources saying Trump wanted to do the same for Hawk Tuah Coin to diversify the country's cryptocurrency portfolio. "We are going to win bigly with the Hawk Tuah Coin," President Trump from the Oval Office. "America has the best memecoins in the whole world, and now our...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Background. Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin protocol permanently caps the total supply of bitcoin (BTC) at 21 million coins, and has never been hacked. As a result of its scarcity and security, Bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold”. Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve. The United States Government currently holds a...

President Donald Trump established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order on Thursday. The Treasury Department will set up an office to administer the reserve, which will be capitalized with Bitcoin (BTC) forfeited to the government as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, according to the order. “Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency,” the order said. “Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve.” The order also created a US Digital Asset Stockpile under...

I own a small amount of crypto assets in my portfolio, so I am not against this asset class per se. I do object to the federal government starting their own reserve fund. Crypto is a relatively new asset and we are still in the beginning stages of exploring how it works as an asset for investing. We have already determined that it does not work as a currency in the U.S. The primary reason is that you must declare capital gains or losses with each transaction. The government should not pick winners and losers. Right now, the Trump administration...

Financial writer and precious metals broker Bill Holter is back with a new warning on the effects of the Trump DOGE team (Department of Government Efficiency). Everyone now knows of the huge unfolding fraud and waste being uncovered in federal government audits. It simply has to be done for the nation to survive, but what many are missing are the consequences of these audits that are unavoidable. Holter and his former business partner Jim Sinclair (RIP) laid out the US bankruptcy scenario nearly five years ago on USAW. The post was titled “Trump Win Offers a Way Forward After US...

A major cryptocurrency exchange says it was the victim of a sophisticated hack that stole about $1.5 billion worth of digital currency, marking one of the biggest online thefts of all time. Bybit said Friday that a routine transfer of Ethereum, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, between digital wallets was “manipulated” by an attacker who transferred the crypto to an unidentified address. The company sought to reassure customers that their cryptocurrency holdings with the exchange were safe. The company added that news of the hack had led to a surge in withdrawal requests and there could be delays in...

Donald Trump has doubled down on his opposition to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) at a rally in Laconia, New Hampshire Monday Night. “Vivek wanted this: I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency,” Trump said, referring to crypto-friendly candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a critic of CBDCs, who recently suspended his campaign after a disappointing showing in Iowa. “This would be a dangerous threat to freedom, and I will stop it from coming to America,” he has previously said. “Such a currency would give a federal government, absolute control over your money. They could take your money,...

@TheInsiderPaper WATCH: Trump says he will never allow creation of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

US House passes bill to ban the Federal Reserve from creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1793702722480550398

While elites around the world – those in political power and in control of top financial institutions – are very much rallying around the plans to introduce central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), in Florida, the state's governor has a different take on where things should be headed. In fact, radically different – Governor Ron DeSantis thinks CBDCs should be banned. Addressing a press conference from behind a podium that had the words “Big Brother's Digital Dollar” attached to it, DeSantis repeated what critics of the CBDC push keep saying. And that is, that the centralized form of digital money controlled...

The European Union (EU) is advancing plans to introduce a new “Digital Identity” that will be directly linked to a central bank digital currency (CBDC), a top Euro official has revealed.The plan was exposed Wednesday on social media by Dutch Member of the European Parliament Rob Roos.Roos posted a video on Twitter/X to reveal the outcome of a closed-door meeting between top Eurocrats about the plan to roll out the system to the public.After leaving the meeting, the MEP took to X to warn the public about the “very bad news.”Roos told his followers that one of the unelected bureaucrats...

September 20, 2023 Washington, D.C. – Today, the House Financial Services Committee considered Majority Whip Emmer’s (MN-06) CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act. The bill was passed out of the Committee and reported favorably to the House floor during the markup session, an important step toward passing this legislation through Congress. Transcript of Remarks: Thank you, Chairman McHenry. I’m extremely proud to have this legislation, that frankly, I have been working on for three years at least, the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act, included in your markup today. It’s the first anti-central bank digital currency legislative effort introduced in the United States and...