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.

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 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.

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/

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/

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/

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

🤦‍♀️ 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

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

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/

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.

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.

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”.

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/

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

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.

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: