Free Republic

The United States Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating whether Signature Bank failed to prevent money laundering before the firm collapsed on Sunday. Federal investigators in Washington DC and Manhattan, New York were specifically looking into the bank's dealings with cryptocurrency clients, to assess if the institution took sufficient steps to detect potential money laundering, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. It is not clear what came of the investigation, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was forced to take over operations of the bank on Sunday when it could not meet the demands of customers withdrawing...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, March 15, 2023 Ho Wan Kwok, A/K/A “Miles Guo,” Arrested For Orchestrating Over $1 Billion Dollar Fraud Conspiracy Over $630 Million of Alleged Fraud Proceeds Seized by U.S. Government Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced the unsealing of a twelve-count Indictment charging HO WAN KWOK, a/k/a “Miles Guo,” a/k/a “Miles Kwok,” a/k/a “Guo Wengui,” a/k/a “Brother Seven,” a/k/a “The Principal,” and KIN MING JE, a/k/a “William Je,”...

The Biden Economy — .. falling apart, everything, everywhere all at once. NYSE halted trading of Charles Schwab, whose shares fell by more than 20%, and even a few Etsy sellers have been impacted by the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse. Schwab’s fall was the firm’s “most ever on an intraday-basis,” ... Signature Bank, “a key financial institution for the cryptocurrency industry,” according to the New York Post, was shut down on Sunday over “similar systemic risk” to SVB. SVB and Signature are the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history, respectively, with combined assets in excess...

Signature Bank, one of the two big US destinations for crypto companies, has been closed by New York regulators. “All depositors of this institution will be made whole,” the Treasury, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in a joint statement. This is the third major bank that has fallen in the space of a week, and investors are spooked. The joint announcement that depositors will be protected above the $250,000 guaranteed by the FDIC appears to be meant to reassure banking customers that their money will not be frozen. Signature had $88.59 billion in deposits as of December...

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem vetoed legislation that would have identified central bank digital currency as money with cryptocurrency being excluded. “At this moment in time, such a government-backed electronic currency has not yet been created,” Noem explained to lawmakers. “More importantly, South Dakota should not open the door to a potential future overreach by the federal government.” House Bill 1193 would have defined money as a “medium of exchange that is currently authorized or adopted by a domestic or foreign government.” The bill was passed 49-17 in the South Dakota House of Representatives and 24-9 in the Senate...

The founder of FTX used executives as cut-outs for donations, prosecutors allege... That Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX that recently filed for bankruptcy, was aggressively using campaign donations as part of a campaign to woo Washington toward his vision of cryptocurrency regulation was no secret — nor was it a secret that other FTX executives quickly became some of the country’s biggest political donors to both Republicans and Democrats, especially those who work on financial regulation. But a new federal criminal indictment alleges that things may have been even simpler than they...

What does the Titanic have in common with NFTs? Not much. One lives on in the collective psyche as a monument to hubris while the other refuses to just sink already. Still, apropos of nothing except the smell of filthy blockchain-adjacent lucre, RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), which has been collecting artifacts associated with the ship since the 1980s, has hooked up with NFT flinger Artifact Labs and Venture Smart Financial Holdings to "bring the RMS Titanic and its physical artifacts into Web3." The ship sank into the frigid Atlantic in 1912, taking the lives of more than 1,500 people aboard....

We should be suspicious of weird coincidences. It’s week five of the Justice Department’s most high-profile—and high-stakes—criminal trial related to the events of January 6, 2021. Five members of the Proud Boys face the rare “seditious conspiracy” charge. Guilty verdicts—almost certain given the government’s near-perfect conviction rate for January 6 defendants—would build legal momentum for a similar indictment against Donald Trump. (The trial is so crucial that Matthew Graves, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia responsible for prosecuting every January 6 case, has shown up in the courtroom on at least three occasions.) Trump is a major...

Artificial intelligence (AI) altcoins are taking off this week as reports surface indicating that Microsoft plans to make a gigantic investment in the AI space. The news website Semafor, citing sources familiar with the matter, reports that Microsoft has been in talks to invest $10 billion in artificial intelligence research company OpenAI. OpenAI created ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that went viral in November and December of 2022. SingularityNET (AGIX) has been one of the single biggest benefactors of that news in the crypto space. The project’s native token is trading at around $0.11 at time of writing, up more than...

Plans for FTX and creditors to demand information on dealings would duplicate the work of the independent examiner who has yet to be appointed, the U.S. trustee said. Proposals for FTX and a committee of its creditors to subpoena founder Sam Bankman-Fried, his immediate family and senior staff of the bankrupt crypto exchange have been opposed by the U.S. Trustee, a branch of the Department of Justice dealing with bankruptcy. The plans, set to be discussed at a Wednesday hearing, would duplicate any independent examination of the exchange’s downfall, U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara said in a legal filing made Thursday....

Popular cryptocurrency broker Genesis is expected to file for bankruptcy within days, insiders have revealed. It would make the firm the latest crypto casualty following the spectacular downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, where the company held some of its funds. According to people familiar with the matter, Genesis is currently in the final stage of its Chapter 11 paperwork as it works toward a deal with creditors. The company, which is owned by venture capital firm Digital Currency Group, had been considering filing for bankruptcy for some time, as it reportedly owes creditors more than $3billion.

Sajid Ikram had made a bundle in cryptocurrency, so when he met a ‘cryptocurrency analyst’ on Facebook with a winning trading strategy, he didn’t think it would be a scam. It turned out to be an elaborate one.Sajid Ikram, 49, is an IT entrepreneur living in Canada. This is an edited version of his story, as told to CNA Insider. I grew my cryptocurrency portfolio by 8 times. Then I blew it on a scam Sajid Ikram had made big gains in cryptocurrency - but he lost it all to an elaborate scam. (Photo: Sajid Ikram) EDMONTON, Canada: Actually, the...

In a court filing, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried asked to redact the names of the co-signers to his $250 million bail. The filing said the U.S. government has not taken a position on the request and that it's being done to protect the privacy and safety of the sureties. The filing said the two remaining sureties have yet to sign their individual bonds, the amounts of which have not yet been determined, but plan to do so by the Thursday deadline. "In recent weeks, Mr. Bankman-Fried's parents have become the target of intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats.

People are waking up to the Marxist onslaught facing our nation. If you still don’t see the pile of bolshie we are up against, ... Communism comes disguised as virtue. Rarely does a despot announce, “I’m here to control every aspect of every life I chose not to murder,” though Schwab is pretty upfront about his planned fascism. Actually, Hitler was too. ... Black Lives Matter. Critical race theory. Climate change. ESG–Environmental, Social and Governance.. ... Marxist Goal #17: Get control of the schools. ... Critical race theory is another Marxist attempt to make white people the bad guys. ......

Over the past two years or so, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) influence over governments and institutions of sovereign nations has become increasingly apparent. Founded in 1971 by German economist Klaus Schwab, the WEF has remained fairly under the radar for decades. However, the organization has been quietly expanding its icy grip around the throats of the world’s population by installing operatives in the upper echelons of governments and corporations. This influence has expanded so far that Schwab and his allies appear to have given up trying to conceal their agenda and even openly gloat about controlling nations’ leaders. When...

2022 has been a pretty dismal year for investors across assets. However, amid record high inflation and soaring interest rates, was there a silver lining around the UK markets?From commodities to bitcoin, with gold, equities and UK property in between, we take a look at how different sectors performed this year and whether they will be a good bet in 2023.CommoditiesCommodities have been the top performing assets this year, with the strong US dollar and the surge in the prices of grains and livestock driving returns, according to analysis by Interactive Investor.Commodities returned 22% over the year to the end...

Sam Bankman-Fried, the man at the center of the FTX scandal, is back on US soil after having been extradited from the Bahamas to face federal charges. Naturally, because our justice system is about as coherent as a two-year-old quoting Shakespeare, the notorious fraudster was immediately granted bail and is now spending the holidays with his family. The American oligarchy is alive and well.But I digress, there’s a lot more to the FTX scandal than just Bankman-Fried’s fate, and one of the more interesting aspects of the entire ordeal is just how close many Democrats were to him. In fact,...

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge kept secret that two of Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest associates had turned against him so the cryptocurrency entrepreneur wouldn’t get spooked and fight extradition from the Bahamas, according to court transcripts made public Friday. At that hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon told the judge prosecutors had expected Bankman-Fried to consent to extradition Monday before there were “some hiccups in the Bahamian courtroom.” “We’re still expecting extradition soon, but given that he has not yet entered his consent”, Sassoon told U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams. The judge got assurance from Ellison’s lawyer that there was...

Russia’s Congressional finance committee chairman, Anatoly Aksakov, said the country is moving to greenlight international trade in cryptocurrency within the next month, according to a report by national news agency TASS."In January, we want to legalize cryptocurrencies to ensure foreign trade activities," Aksakov said, per a translated version of the report.The chairman highlighted that although Russia is taking steps to allow bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments for imports, there are no plans to encourage similar usage of the burgeoning assets within the boundaries of the nation’s territory."The circulation of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment on the territory of Russia will...

Viridi Funds announced that the Viridi Cleaner Energy Crypto-Mining & Semiconductor ETF (NYSEARCA:RIGZ) will liquidate and de-list from the New York Stock Exchange. RIGZ was actively managed and provided market participants with exposure to the cryptocurrency mining industry and indirect exposure to crypto-assets such as Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and Ethereum (ETH-USD). RIGZ, which jumped out of the gates with a 15% rally in its first 48 hours of trading, caught a wave of upward momentum from the crypto craze. The fund soared 133% in its first four months of trading, alongside Bitcoin’s peak. However, since the fund topped out at $56.63...