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141043 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:34
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

All of this and more in the last Citation Needed issue of the year.

If you like my writing and want to support my work, please consider signing up for a pay-what-you-want subscription! It really helps me to keep doing this.

https://www.citationneeded.news/signup

141042 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:32
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

Troublingly, the conditions that enabled FTX’s fraud remain unchanged today. With the same red flags waving across today’s cryptocurrency industry, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that similar frauds have only yet to be discovered.

From secretly acquiring “grey area” cash-for-crypto businesses to buying political influence to paying off lawyers, the FTX adversary cases describe incredibly shady practices that are far from as unusual as the crypto industry likes to claim. Remember: all of these activities happened while FTX ran Super Bowl ads about being a “safe and easy way to get into crypto” and Bankman-Fried described his business at every opportunity as “the most regulated crypto exchange by far”.

Troublingly, the conditions that enabled FTX’s fraud remain unchanged today. Lack of auditing is the norm. Knee-jerk resistance to regulation remains the default industry-wide, and the industry refined Bankman-Fried’s early attempts at political influence, spending over $130 million to install handpicked surrogates in Washington to further reduce any chance of meaningful oversight.

With the same red flags waving across today’s cryptocurrency industry, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that similar frauds have only yet to be discovered. The primary difference may be that other firms haven’t faced their CZ moment yet: the pushing over of the first domino that causes the whole precarious thing to collapse.

141041 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:29
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

There's a case against Anthony Scaramucci, who just announced he bought a new Lamborghini as he and his business partner are being accused of possibly "looting the [SkyBridge fund] assets for themselves", after Bankman-Fried bailed out their failing crypto fund.

The Mooch
FTX is trying to recover over $100 million from transactions with entities associated with Anthony Scaramucci, who I’ll note is still, more than seven years later, earning snarky comments in legal filings over his ten-day “brief stint as a White House Communications Director”. The adversary case aims to regain funds transferred to Scaramucci’s SkyBridge investment funds and related conference series. FTX’s investments in SkyBridge’s crypto funds made no financial sense, with employees questioning why an experienced crypto trading firm like Alameda Research would spend $45 million to obtain interest in “a basket of cryptocurrencies that the FTX Group could have easily purchased itself less expensively”, purchased by an investment fund with little crypto trading experience, worth about $12 million.

The money was plainly intended to buy access to Scaramucci’s network of celebrities and investors, and Scaramucci is portrayed in the adversary case as far more of a shrewd networker than he is a capable investor. Both Scaramucci and Bankman-Fried are depicted by the debtors as mercenary: Scaramucci allegedly cultivated the relationship with Bankman-Fried out of desperation over his rapidly failing crypto fund, hoping he was someone who would “spend money while asking very few questions”. Bankman-Fried, realizing that the FTX entities were in a dangerous position after spending so much of his customers’ money, was eyeing Scaramucci as a connection to wealthy investors who

The adversary case, though it is only a civil matter seeking to recover funds from Scaramucci, seems to accuse the influential investor and his business partner of serious wrongdoing. According to the debtors, “Scaramucci and his partner, Defendant Brett Messing, both managers of SkyBridge II, ignored the bargained-for restrictions on Skybridge’s ability to sell the tokens and raided Plaintiffs’ segregated cryptocurrency account no later than December 2023. ... By late 2023, it became apparent that Scaramucci and Messing at best grossly mismanaged SkyBridge’s assets and, at worst, may have looted the assets for themselves.” The debtors add that, despite the fund’s poor performance, Scaramucci and Messing paid themselves over $22 million — more than the fund brought in in management fees. Amidst all this, Scaramucci has just announced he’s buying a new Lamborghini.5

141040 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:25
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

There are cases against fourteen political action committees and dark money groups, some of which were recipients of FTX's illegal straw donations as FTX tried to hide some of its political maneuvering.

A Sankey diagram showing over $50 million flowing from FTX business entities, through various FTX executives, political action committees, and dark money groups, into fourteen PACs and dark money groups

141039 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:24
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

There's a case against crypto exchanges run by Justin Sun (among the shadiest of Donald Trump's new crypto business partners), which is trying to dodge returning assets that FTX entities were secretly trading on his platforms.

Finally, an adversary case against the Justin Sun-owned Huobi (now HTX) and Poloniex exchanges alleges that they are improperly holding on to a combined $27.5 million. Though both accounts belonged to Alameda Research, the Huobi account was opened in a former employee’s name, and the Poloniex account was nominally registered to Sam Bankman-Fried. A Huobi subsidiary also withdrew around $14 million from an FTX account in the preference period prior to its collapse, which FTX is trying to claw back, and various Justin Sun-affiliated entities have filed roughly $30 million in claims on assets held at FTX.

The Justin Sun entities’ refusal to return assets are shrouded in the same sort of suspiciousness that tends to follow Sun everywhere he goes, and the excuses provided to the FTX debtors are troubling. First, a member of Huobi’s legal team member told the FTX bankruptcy team he didn’t work at the “correct” Huobi entity, and refused to identify which entity this was, or provide details for anyone who worked there. Then Huobi claimed Chinese police were investigating the Alameda-owned accounts on Huobi, but refused to provide any further information. At Poloniex, employees made “seemingly arbitrary” requests for the debtors, then claimed that Poloniex was undergoing an “internal restructuring” and cut communications.

Personally, if I were on the FTX bankruptcy team seeking to regain access to funds held on Justin Sun-owned platforms, I’d be very concerned about whether the mone

141038 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:23
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

They include a case against Genesis Block, a self-described "grey area" crypto business secretly acquired by FTX, which is now trying to claim over $65 million of FTX money belongs to them in what the bankruptcy estate describes as a "baffling act of hubris".

Genesis Block
In early 2020, FTX entities acquired Hong Kong-based Genesis Block, an over-the-counter trading firm and cryptocurrency ATM operator. It served as a crypto on- and off-ramp in Asia, where the company publicly acknowledged they were operating in a “grey area”. “People were literally lining up around the corner with bags of cash at Genesis Block,” a former employee said. “Sometimes they shut the door saying they were out of bitcoin.” The company was a valuable asset for FTX, allowing them to circumvent capital controls and providing business connections in Asia.

FTX’s ownership of Genesis Block was kept secret from the public and from regulators. FTX also used Genesis Block to make venture investments and operate various other entities they acquired or created in Singapore, the Philippines, and Mexico, so as to reduce regulatory exposure. (FTX employees helpfully put their reasoning in writing). While FTX was still in Hong Kong, Genesis Block was the nominal employer of several FTX personnel — including Gary Wang and Nishad Singh — in order to circumvent visa requirements.

Genesis Block co-founder Clement Ip has rather brazenly claimed he is owed $65.8 million held in an FTX account belonging to his partner’s company, Myth Success. However, FTX debtors say Myth Success was yet another shell company used by FTX to circumvent regulators, acquire companies without publicizing FTX’s involvement, and secretly trade on other platforms, and that it had no business operations of its own. As FTX collapsed, when its executives were desperately searching the couch cushions for money to satisfy withdrawals, Genesis Block and Myth Success acknowledged that the money in Myth Success’s accounts belonged to FTX, and transferred some of it back. However, the debtors allege that “Ip appears to have hoped that the fact of these transfers would be lost in the chaos and disarray of the FTX Group’s implosion”, and described his claim on the assets as “a baffling act of hubris”.

141037 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:22
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

The roughly thirty FTX adversary cases, filed against business partners, customers, effective altruist organizations, and political action committees, pull back the curtain on how cryptocurrency companies do business.

Over a year after Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, perhaps one of the most memorable moments to stick with me was an unexpected one: a brief exchange between prosecutors and BlockFi founder Zac Prince. (FTX’s collapse bankrupted the crypto lender, which had loaned FTX entities hundreds of millions.)

BlockFi's Zac Prince: [With] crypto firms, it was much less common to have audited balance sheets because of issues with getting audits as a cryptocurrency firm.

Prosecutor: Just to be clear, some of the balance sheets you received from crypto firms were what is called unaudited balance sheets.

Prince: I would say the majority of balance sheets that we received from cryptocurrency firms were unaudited.
This casual statement about lending hundreds of millions based on scrawled estimates and a “trust me, bro” underscored the deception in crypto executives’ post-collapse claims that FTX was a rare bad actor with aberrant business practices, a black sheep among scores of legitimate businesses. On the contrary, many of FTX’s activities were business as usual in an industry where regulatory enforcement and proper audits were rare, but maximal leverage and risk-taking were par for the course.

I’m not so much fascinated by the specifics of the FTX adversary cases two years post-bankruptcy, where the debtors work to claw back the remaining traces of FTX’s exorbitant spending. Instead, I’m interested in the pulling back of the curtain on the cryptocurrency industry’s day-to-day operations. Shady practices have become so commonplace as to be open secrets, only questioned during occasional brushes with those from more strictly regulated financial sectors — who often react with horror when given a peek at the crypto industry’s standard operating procedure.

In the span of only a few days in November 2024, the FTX bankruptcy estate filed over thirty adversary cases.1 Several target political action committees and non-profits that received hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from FTX as part of the company’s political influence campaigns and reputation polishing efforts. Others target other cryptocurrency exchanges where Alameda Research or affiliated entities were trading — sometimes secretly — and where account balances haven’t been released back to the bankruptcy estate. Some target FTX customers engaged in criminal behavior. And some target employees, contractors, or business associates of FTX and its entities.

141036 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 31 Dec 00:20
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

Newsletter: Adversary cases from the FTX collapse further expose how crypto companies do business: with secret acquisitions of “grey area” businesses, buying influence, and creative accounting.

https://www.citationneeded.news/not-just-one-bad-apple/

136614 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 24 Dec 01:00
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

Trump’s new director of the “Crypto Council” is Bo Hines, whose qualifications are apparently 1) playing football in college; 2) losing the 2022 midterm general election for a North Carolina House seat; and 3) losing even worse in 2024.

Trump apparently has more favors to repay than he has political positions to fill, so he’s just creating new ones. In addition to his newly-invented “Crypto & AI Czar”d position, allocated to reactionary PayPal mafioso and venture capitalist David Sacks, Trump has now decided he needs a whole “Crypto Council”. Among its first appointees is Bo Hines, whose qualifications to become the council’s executive director are 1) playing football in college; 2) losing the 2022 midterm general election for a North Carolina House seat; and 3) losing even worse in 2024, when he not only failed to secure the Republican primary nomination, but came in fourth place.26 The crypto world has, like me, mostly reacted with bafflement given that Hines’ crypto qualifications are as absent as all his others. He did receive around $425,000 in backing in 2022 from American Dream Federal Action, a cryptocurrency-focused super PAC run by then-FTX executive and now-federal inmate Ryan Salame, so he was evidently able to convince Salame of his usefulness to the cause.27

136613 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 24 Dec 00:58
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency

Despite the looming administration change, the SEC has still been sending out Wells notices. Crypto.com, however, is so confident the SEC will be hobbled by the new administration that they withdrew a lawsuit against the agency — the same day their CEO met with Trump.

The Unicoin crypto investment company say they have received a Wells notice from the SEC,c warning them of impending legal action involving not only unregistered securities offerings, but also fraud and deceptive business practices. Unicoin’s CEO Alex Konanykhin said the company received subpoenas earlier this year focused on the company’s eponymous token, which they say is backed by real-world assets including real estate. This is not the first SEC investigation into Unicoin, though previous ones did not result in any legal action. Unlike most crypto projects, Unicoin self-identifies its token as a security. While Unicoin had previously agreed with the SEC that they would not to try to go public or undertake ICOs, Konanykhin said they had decided to breach the agreement after Trump won the presidency.13 As a side note, Fortune Crypto has rather amusingly attributed this notice to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s “anti-crypto campaign”. Whether the headline writer meant to suggest that going after fraudsters is itself “anti-crypto”, or if this was an accidental peek behind the curtain of the “SEC anti-crypto campaign” narrative coming from the industry, is not quite clear to me.

The SEC has also reportedly delivered a Wells notice to the CyberKongz NFT gaming project. CyberKongz claimed in a statement on Twitter that the SEC communicated to them that they “can not have a token (ERC-20) in tandem with a blockchain game without registering it as a security”. Ho

Crypto.com has abruptly dropped the lawsuit it had only just filed against the SEC in October [I68] — a lawsuit which seemed to be a direct response to a Wells notice issued by the agency against the company in August. This unusual move just so happened to coincide with a meeting between Donald Trump and Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, who posted a photograph with the president-elect on Twitter with the caption “Honored to have a seat at the table.”12 A spokesperson explained, “We withdrew our action against the SEC given our intent to work with the incoming administration on a regulatory framework for the industry.” Trump and Marszalek reportedly discussed crypto-related political appointments and the prospect of a Bitcoin strategic national stockpile.5

Do you think Marszalek asked to take the picture in front of the framed Kim Jong Un photo, or was that just coincidence?

136612 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 24 Dec 00:57
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency

The SEC has hit a subsidiary of Jump Crypto with a $123 million fine for their backroom dealings with the operator of the now-collapsed Terra stablecoin. They’ve also fined Cantor Fitzgerald — a company owned by a close Trump ally — for $6.75 million.

The SEC has levied a $123 million fine against Jump Crypto subsidiary Tai Mo Shan [W3IGG], which was involved in a secret deal with Terraform Labs to help prop up the floundering Terra stablecoin in May 2021. Jump spent $20 million to help the supposedly “self-healing” stablecoin regain its $1 peg, earning about $1.28 billion in the process, and Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon would later claim that the restoration to a $1 price was thanks to an automatic feature of the Terra project and not some backroom deal [I54, 60].10 This lie by Terraform Labs and Jump Crypto helped build confidence in the sustainability of the Terra token, which collapsed horrendously a year later.

The SEC has also reached a settlement with Cantor Fitzgerald, which will pay a $6.75 million fine over allegations that two special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) had misled investors when they claimed that they had not been in contact with the eventual targets of their acquisitions.11 While the companies were not crypto-related (one is a now-bankrupt “smart glass” manufacturer called View, the other an Earth-observation satellite company called Satellogic), SEC action against a company helmed by Trump’s transition team co-chair and soon-to-be Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is noteworthy. Cantor Fitzgerald is also closely linked to the Tether stablecoin [I71].

136610 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 24 Dec 00:56
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency

Newsletter: The SEC is still busy even though it may soon be undermined, crypto industry capture of government continues to worsen, and several media outlets botch their crypto reporting at a time it’s needed most.

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-72/

135744 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 22 Dec 23:29
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency

This is particularly hilarious given that Fortune has skewered Gary Gensler for failing to go after the FTX, Celsius, and Terra frauds.

Schrödinger’s regulator can’t go after fraud before the company collapses, but if it collapses and the SEC didn’t warn us, they failed.

https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/11/sbfs-disgrace-could-make-things-awkward-for-gary-gensler-and-the-democrats/

Gary Gensler blew it again. After his agency failed to warn investors about Terra and Celsius—whose collapses this spring sparked a trillion-dollar investor wipeout—the Securities and Exchange Commission chair allowed an even bigger debacle to unfold right under his nose. I’m talking, of course, about the revelation this week that the $30 billion FTX empire was a house of cards and that its golden boy founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is the crypto equivalent of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes.

135742 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 22 Dec 23:10
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency

apparently preventing fraud is “anti-crypto”.

according to this Fortune headline, the SEC going after fraud and deceptive business practices after a company publicly announced they were going to breach a previous agreement with the agency is an “anti-crypto campaign”

https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/12/16/unicoin-gensler-wells-notice-sec-crypto-lawsuit-enforcement-action/

According to the Wells Notice, viewed by Fortune, the SEC plans to formally accuse Unicoin of violations related to fraud, deceptive practices, and the offering and sale of unregistered securities, although the letter did not specify the exact violations.

Still, because of its novel approach, Konanykhin told Fortune that the company has been subject to several SEC investigations, though the latest is the first to result in a Wells Notice. He said that the company had entered into a so-called standstill agreement with the SEC earlier this year not to conduct an ICO or go public, but Konanykhin said he decided to breach the agreement after Trump won the recent election. Unicoin had previously filed paperwork with the agency announcing its intent to go public through a reverse merger.

Fortune headline: “SEC plans to sue Unicoin—a sign outgoing Chair Gensler’s anti-crypto campaign is not over”

114692 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 25 Nov 2024 18:43
tags: #FTX #crypto #cryptocurrency

pro tip: name your organization something that sounds terrible to sue

FTX Trading Ltd. et al, Plaintiffs, against Fair Democracy, Defendant

111408 author: SnowshadowII@beige.party 20 Nov 2024 22:55
https://gizmodo.com/investors-appear-to-think-bluesky-crypto-firm-is-the-bluesky-social-network-2000527227
tags: #business #cryptocurrency #finance #news #socialmedia

🤦‍♀️ uh oh!!💰 😅

Investors Appear to Think Bluesky Crypto Firm Is the Bluesky Social Network

"The social media platform Bluesky has grown from 12 million to more than 20 million users since the election
"The Canadian crypto company Bluesky Digital Assets Corp has seen its stock take off, in a manner of speaking, over the past week as investors buy up what they almost certainly think are shares of the other Bluesky, the social media platform that has been scooping up X-iles and recently hit 20 million users. First spotted by Bloomberg, Bluesky Digital Assets Corp’s stock value has increased eightfold since the beginning of November."

#News #Finance #SocialMedia #Cryptocurrency #Business

95504 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 02 Nov 2024 23:35
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

Also, don’t forget there’s an audio version of these newsletters for those of you who prefer to listen! There’s an embedded player in the article, or find it in the Citation Needed audio feed wherever you get your podcasts. 100% real human voice, no text-to-speech.

https://pod.link/1719025552

95503 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 02 Nov 2024 23:25
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

That’s just a tiny portion of what’s in this week’s issue. If you like my writing and want to support my work, please consider signing up for a pay-what-you-want subscription! It really helps me to keep doing this work.

https://www.citationneeded.news/signup/

95502 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 02 Nov 2024 23:24
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

Some new crypto PACs have cropped up, including a few putting emergency funding behind Ted Cruz (R-TX) as his race appears to be tighter than originally predicted.

The weirdest new PAC is probably a very short-lived committee called “Republicans for A Pro-Crypto Senate Majority”, which raised about $200,000 from mostly Coinbase employees (including CEO Brian Armstrong), but also people like World Liberty Financial team member Zachary Witkoff.

A joint fundraising committee called “Republicans for A Pro-Crypto Senate Majority” was created and then disbanded almost as quickly, registering with the FEC on August 26 and then filing a termination report on October 30. The group listed as beneficiaries of its fundraising various PACs for the Republican Senatorial candidates Sam Brown (NV), Bernie Moreno (OH), Mike Rogers (MI), Dave McCormick (PA), as well as the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The group raised a total of $208,000 over its short lifespan, bringing in about half of that just from Coinbase executives including CEO Brian Armstrong ($23,300), president Emilie Choi ($20,000), vice president Kara Campbell ($13,200), and chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad ($13,200). Other notable contributions, all in the amount of $13,200, came from Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain, Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla, Haun Ventures’ Kathryn Haun (formerly of Coinbase), Anthony Scaramucci, venture capitalist Mike Dudas, and Zachary Witkoff of both the Witkoff Group and Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto projecte. Another $13,200 contribution came from Toby Scammell,f a man who served prison time and was fined as a result of both criminal and civil insider trading cases in 2014,36 and then who was fined $26 million by the FTC earlier this year for deceiving customers who were trying to obtain PPP loans37 (he lists his profession in the FEC report as “retired”). Another came from Ryan Selkis, best known for his

95501 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 02 Nov 2024 23:23
tags: #coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

Elsewhere, Coinbase’s astroturfed “Stand With Crypto” lobbying group threw a Black Keys concert to benefit Bernie Moreno (R-OH). Perhaps because so few people showed up, half the audience were left watching the backs of the performers. “Weirdest gig we’ve ever played”, said the band.

Despite leaving Bernie Moreno off their endorsements list, Stand With Crypto threw a private benefit concert in Akron, Ohio that was nonetheless free to attend for anyone willing to fork over their contact information and download the Coinbase app. Headlining the show was the formerly popular band The Black Keys, self-described “pretty liberal motherfuckers” who once made fun of “right-clicking” NFTs, who have now found themselves playing a show to benefit a staunchly conservative candidate whose election could turn the Senate over to a Republican majority.21 Likely, they chose to take this gig for the paycheck despite all that after they were forced to cancel every concert on their planned tour this summer due to poor ticket sales. The Black Keys themselves, from the stage, referred to the event as the “weirdest gig we’ve ever played” — perhaps referring to the fact that their staging was set up backwards, with the band facing around 250 attendees standing with them on the stage, but leaving the large orchestra seating area empty and the roughly 250 people in the balcony area left to stare at scaffolding for the lights, and the performers’ backs. This bizarre choice was likely related to the fact that only around 500 people bothered to show up for a free concert in a venue that seats five times as many people. After more than thirty minutes of opening remarks extolling the virtues of crypto, during which one attendee joked they’d been tricked into attending a time-share

95500 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 02 Nov 2024 23:22
tags: #coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspolitics

Coinbase has been promoting a new $25 million contribution to the Fairshake crypto-focused super PAC, which, like their May contribution of the same amount, appears to be in violation of campaign finance laws prohibiting contributions by federal contractors.

However, when I noted this earlier this week, I was met with a threat from Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, who tweeted that continuing to report on Coinbase would be “.... unwise”.

Tweet by paulgrewal.eth on October 30, 2024
@iampaulgrewal
Once again, with feeling. Repeating misrepresentations of facts after previously being put on notice is …. unwise.

Quoted tweet by Molly White @molly0xFFF
As an active federal contractor, Coinbase is prohibited from making political contributions, including to super PACs. This makes $50 million that they have contributed in violation of pay-to-play laws for contractors.

Despite being the subject of our complaint with the FEC pertaining to their $25 million contribution to Fairshake in May, which was also within the prohibited time period, Coinbase has brazenly doubled this amount with a second contribution. While they’ve not (at least that I’ve seen) argued that they were unaware of this campaign finance prohibition, which would already be unlikely given clear warnings on Fairshake’s website that contributions by federal contractors are prohibited, this newest contribution seems to definitively remove that potential line of argument for them.

Instead, Coinbase’s only rebuttal to our complainta has been to claim that, despite that pesky federal contract of theirs, they somehow aren’t a federal contractor due to a detail in how the contract is funded. Because the contract is being paid out of the pool of seized cryptocurrencies and other assets known as the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Fund, they’ve argued they do not fall within the definition of “federal contractor”16 used by the FEC because they are not paid with “funds appropriated by the Congress” — an argument that lawyers at Public Citizen have plainly described as “incorrect”, and one that we rebutted on August 5 in our supplemental filing (citations omitted here):

As the Supreme Court has recently explained, “an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes.” Under this definition, Congress’s ena

Coinbase’s only communications with me since the FEC complaint have been public, made via a handful of tweets171819 from Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal. In them, he outlined this argument while also insinuating that I am intentionally spreading “misinformation” on behalf of my shadowy backers. While Grewal has come up with this rather creative legal theory under which he argues Coinbase’s contributions were not prohibited, he has not identified any factual errors in my reporting. As far as I’m aware, neither he nor anyone else from Coinbase have commented on our position since we made the supplemental filing on August 5, except to repeat the claim in a tweet19 (without adding any further support for it) that the funds with which they’re being paid are not Congressionally appropriated.

Despite that, Grewal retweeted my recent post highlighting Coinbase’s newest contribution and its apparent violation of this prohibition with a threat, writing: “Once again, with feeling. Repeating misrepresentations of facts after previously being put on noticec is …. unwise.” And for the record, Grewal is not some total hack with no legal background, but is in fact an ex-magistrate judge who has somehow now found himself reduced to issuing impotent threats on Twitter for Coinbase. (I assume the position pays pretty well, but I can’t imagine any salary at which I would be willing to post with a straight face that it would be “.... unwise” for a writer to continue to report on my company).

95499 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 02 Nov 2024 23:18
tags: #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

Newsletter: Coinbase threatens me that continuing to report on their activities would be “.... unwise”. Also, election spending hits a fever pitch, with several new crypto PACs coming out of the woodwork.

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-69/

93849 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 30 Oct 2024 22:30
tags: #coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

See my reporting on their previous violation, which is being reviewed by the FEC: https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

93848 author: molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 30 Oct 2024 22:30
tags: #coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics

As an active federal contractor, Coinbase is prohibited from making political contributions, including to super PACs. This makes $50 million that they have contributed in violation of pay-to-play laws for contractors.

Tweet by Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong
We get the U.S. election results in 6 days, and no matter how you slice it, it will be the most pro-crypto congress ever.

But we're not slowing down post-election.

Today I'm announcing that
@coinbase
has committed another $25M to support Fairshake PAC, which they will use leading up to the 2026 midterms to elect pro-crypto candidates.

We're also supporting
@standwithcrypto
in their stretch goal to reach 4m advocates by the 2026 midterms.

The crypto voter is already a force to be reckoned with, but it will continue to grow.

We're going to keep showing up to protect our customer's rights and help get sensible legislation passed in major markets around the world.

7616 author: stux@mstdn.social 27 Jul 2024 01:29
tags: #Cryptocurrency

So you just buy BlaBlaCoin with dollars via a centralized exchange that can be send to your MeowMeowWallet and from there you just convert it to BoobaCoin that can be send via a decentralized exchange to convert into Flurbo's that you need for playing games at Blips and Chitz! :bitcoin:

Makes sense... right? 🤔

No? Then you're all caught up in #cryptocurrency! :ablobwink: