Free Republic

As a scorching cover story in BusinessWeek reveals, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman didn't just raise a criminal, but actively took part in running FTX and enjoying the spoils of the fraud. They regularly turned up in the company's offices and were included on important emails, and, most critically, flexed their prestige to open doors in Silicon Valley and Democratic power circles for their son. Meanwhile, these two advocates for the poor helped themselves to a $16 million luxury villa in the Bahamas and $10 million in cash—paid for by FTX customers. ronically, Bankman-Fried reportedly plans to invoke an "advice...

Weeks after its international launch, Worldcoin is drawing the attention of officials around the world. Kenya’s government has gone so far as to shut down the service. The international ID company, backed by big investors in Silicon Valley’s technology industry, now has to defend itself in investigations. The central question is whether the biometric data that the company is collecting is secure or not. What is Worldcoin? Worldcoin is the creation of Sam Altman. He is best known as the head of OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT. The goal of Worldcoin and the company backing it,...

Central bank digital currencies are feverishly being developed all over the globe, and this is something that should deeply alarm all of us. For a moment, I would like for you to imagine a world where the government instantly knows whenever you buy or sell something. No transaction would ever be truly private, not even your most personal or embarrassing ones. In addition, your money would not be truly your own under such a system. Your access to the digital currency system would be a privilege which could potentially be suspended or revoked with the click of a mouse. All...

Police said the body parts were cleanly amputated, suggesting the work of a professional. Fernando Perez Algaba had been staying in Argentina for a week before his alleged murder. Fernando Perez Algaba, the cryptocurrency influencer from Argentina who had been missing for more than a week, was found dead on Wednesday. Police found Mr Algaba's remains inside a suitcase near a stream in Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, according to New York Post. The grisly case came to light after a group of children found the red suitcase filled with body parts while playing by the stream on Sunday, the outlet...

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.“The Government has...

If you receive a call from someone asking if you remember them, Alabama Securities Commission is urging you to immediately hang up. It said it could be part of a cryptocurrency scam responsible for robbing nearly a hundred people out of 23 million dollars. It’s called the pig butchering scam, and the director of the Alabama Securities Commission, Amanda Senn said it’s on the rise around the state, especially in the Tennessee Valley. “We’ve had several in the Madison County area. About half of these that have come are North Alabama victims,” said Senn, “We’ve just had several more cases...

A major leader of the Brexit movement, Nigel Farage, has just had his decades-old bank accounts closed, allegedly for “commercial” reasons, while seven additional banks have apparently refused to have him as a customer.Until we have independent evidence of what is really going on with Farage’s accounts, we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that the bank has closed his accounts for legitimate commercial reasons. But even if this particular account closure had nothing to do with political prejudice, there is no denying that the past couple of years have produced more than one isolated incident of banking services penalising...

A recently divorced woman lost her entire 401(k) savings to a scammer she met on Tinder who convinced her to invest in cryptocurrency — the latest “pig butchering” scheme targeting lonely people. Rebecca Holloway, 42, a mother-of-three, said she was swindled out of $100,000 by a scammer claiming to be a French entrepreneur named “Fred” after the two matched on Tinder in March, the Daily Mail reports. She added: “Looking back, the signs are so obvious. But at the time you want to believe it’s real.” The scam that hit Holloway is the latest example of “pig butchering,” a term...

The original idea of the “independent” administrative agencies was to place the details of governing a complex economy in the hands of wise experts. These experts would be removed from tawdry and corrupting political influences, and would straightforwardly apply neutral principles to achieve fairness and justice in our society. In the real world, every federal administrative agency, with especial emphasis on the supposedly “independent” ones, becomes larger, more power-hungry, and more corrupt with every passing year. Somehow, it’s in the nature of the job as federal bureaucrat to believe that you can perfect the world by seizing ever more power...

During TNT's broadcast of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday, Shaquille O'Neal hinted at his involvement in an FTX lawsuit while speaking to Stephen Curry — just hours before getting served. "Thanks for getting me in trouble," O'Neal said to Curry, likely in reference to their joint involvement in the FTX case. "Don't say nothing," he continued, as both NBA legends fell into laughter. Later that night, O'Neal was reportedly served two legal complaints — one for his involvement in the ongoing FTX lawsuit and another regarding an NFT project — by a process server who attended the game,...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made his first public appearance as a presidential candidate at the Bitcoin 2023 conference today, sharing his own experiences with Bitcoin, warning about how technology is enabling government totalitarianism around the world and describing how he would protect the rights of Bitcoiners if elected president. “As president, I will make sure that your right to hold and use bitcoin is inviolable,” Kennedy said. "I am an ardent defender and lifelong defender of civil liberties and Bitcoin is both an exercise and a guarantee of those freedoms.” Kennedy told the crowd that he was first inspired by...

An order signed recently by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicates that there is a gold smuggling operation between Iran and Venezuela that is funding Hezbollah terror activity. It was revealed that, in May, dozens of kilograms of gold were smuggled on an Iranian Mahan Air flight, which is subject to American sanctions, from Venezuela to Tehran. The funds from the smuggled gold were transferred to Hezbollah.

The European Central Bank is inviting experts in identification and authentication to contribute to the development of rules for the digital euro. A ‘workstream’ is being set up to establish identification and authentication requirements for the digital currency, with the goal of enabling best-in-class user experience and security. Impact assessments for various existing approaches to identification and authentication will also be carried out. The EU’s planned digital currency is expected to be stored in the EU Digital Identity Wallet, with support for peer-to-peer transactions. The Chair of the Rulebook Development Group is setting up several dedicated workstreams to support the...

This article is not financial advice and is for informational purposes only. All financial decisions and investments should be made based on your personal objectives, risk profile, and other factors. After my appearances with Glenn Beck, I often receive hundreds of emails asking a variety of financial questions (and I try my best to get at least some of them answered)! The top question I have been receiving recently underscores a huge fear: the safety and preservation of your hard-earned dollars. More than any question, what people are asking of late is, “Should I pull my money from the bank?”...

JUST IN: DeSantis vows to outlaw CBDC, resist federal government if unilaterally authorized by Federal Reserve or Treasury"They want to get rid of crypto [...] In Florida, we'll have a prohibition against [CBDC to make sure] we don't have a financial surveillance state." (video in link below) https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1653387572289187842

Days after he published a lengthy blog post in which he claimed to be "Satoshi Nakamoto," the alias used to create the bitcoin cryptocurrency, Australian Craig Wright has erased the post and replaced it with one that says he doesn't "have the courage" to prove his claim. Here's what seems to be the central paragraph in the new post: "When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this." The mysterious short posting, which replaces one in which...

The same bug that has plagued several of the biggest players in the Bitcoin economy may have just bitten the Silk Road. On Thursday, one of the recently-reincarnated drug-selling black market site’s administrators posted a long announcement to the Silk Road 2.0 forums admitting that the site had been hacked by one of its sellers, and its reserve of Bitcoins belonging to both the users and the site itself stolen. The admin, who goes by the name “Defcon,” blamed the same “transaction malleability” bug in the Bitcoin protocol that led to several of the cryptocurrency’s exchanges halting withdrawals in the...

Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto might have been discovered, despite his best efforts to maintain anonymity over the last several years. Newsweek reported Thursday that it spent considerable time tracking down the father of Bitcoin, only to discover that he might be living in Temple City, Calif. It took a winding road to reach a 64-year-old man named Satoshi Nakamoto who not only had no desire to speak with Newsweek, but called the police on its reporter. When the police arrived, Nakamoto -- who Newsweek had been contacting and trying to track down for weeks -- finally had something to say....

(Reuters) - A Japanese American man thought to be the reclusive multi-millionaire father of Bitcoin emerged from a modest Southern California home and denied involvement with the digital currency before leading reporters on a freeway car chase to the local headquarters of the Associated Press. Satoshi Nakamoto, a name known to legions of bitcoin traders, practitioners and boosters around the world, appeared to lose his anonymity on Thursday after Newsweek published a story that said he lived in Temple City, California, just east of Los Angeles.

One of our favorite japes is about the group of scientists who figure out the secret to life — a way to make a human being from nothing but dirt. When they’ve worked it all out, they are so excited they go directly to God to announce their discovery that He is no longer necessary. He appears a bit surprised, but they offer to demonstrate. He nods. One of the scientists bends down and scoops up a fistful of dirt. “Oh, no,” God exclaims. “You’ve got to make your own dirt.” This is how we feel about bitcoins. The idea...