In 2022, Shan Hanes, the chief executive of the Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas, met a friendly investment adviser from Australia on WhatsApp. The adviser persuaded Hanes to invest a few thousand dollars in an online cryptocurrency-trading platform, which generated impressive returns. Hanes ended up investing all his own money, $60,000 from his daughter's college fund, $40,000 from his local church and $47 million from the bank he ran.

The “adviser” was, it transpired, not in Australia but most likely in Asia; the “trading platform” was fake; and Hanes had become the highest-profile US victim of a practice known in Chinese as sha zhu pan, a “pig-butchering scam”. Some money was recovered, but investors lost $9 million, the bank collapsed, and Hanes was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

How do the scams work?

“Long cons” have been around for ever, but these – in which the scammers invest a lot of time in building a relationship with the victim, a process they liken to fattening a pig for slaughter – have distinctive features.

Scammers actively seek out victims on social media: pig-butchering originated on regional Chinese dating sites around 10 years ago, but it has since spread to platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. They create trusting relationships with their victims, sometimes of a romantic nature; one former scammer told The Economist she’d been trained to target people who were “rich but not good-looking”.

They rely heavily on crypto, which is easy to launder and difficult to recover. These and other online scams are increasingly run out of Chinese-linked “scam hubs” or “fraud factories” in Southeast Asia.

How did such operations develop?

Gambling – illegal on mainland China – is one of the main revenue streams for domestic and foreign-based Chinese mafias. Casinos and online gambling hubs for Chinese-speakers, based in Cambodia and Myanmar, were one of their main enterprises until 2019, when Cambodia tightened its regulations; Covid lockdowns then emptied the casinos. The criminal syndicates refitted their properties as centres where teams of workers – often trafficked and coerced – run online scams at scale.

Chinese citizens were their original targets, followed by Chinese communities around the world. But they soon expanded to other nationalities, which also meant expanding their trafficking activities. In the four years from January 2020, at least $75 billion was taken in crypto scams; estimates suggest the industry generates over $500 billion a year, comparable to the global drugs trade.

Why do they traffic people?

Many of the gangs’ voluntary workers went home during Covid; not enough locals had the necessary language and computer skills, and recruiting people into cybercrime isn't always easy. The scammers’ solution was to lure people – typically young graduates from developing countries – to cities such as Bangkok with fake offers of legitimate employment, then drive them to compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia or Laos, and put them to work under threats of torture, organ harvesting and sexual slavery.

A UN report this February found that there is a workforce of at least 300,000 people from 66 countries, about 75% of them in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia. Many live in vast compounds, like self-contained towns – some over 500 acres in size, heavily fortified, with armed guards. It's unlikely that all the workers are coerced, but many of them certainly are; some families have had to pay ransoms in cryptocurrency to get them out.

What are the nations doing about it?

Weak local governance, along with easy access to China, is the reason the gangs set up shop in the Mekong region in the first place. Myanmar's military junta doesn’t control the whole territory; much of it is controlled by insurgent groups and warlords; while Cambodian politics has been dominated by one family since the 1980s. Transparency International ranks both governments among the most corrupt in the world. Analysts calculate that Cambodia’s scam hubs generate earnings worth about 60% of the nation's GDP. According to the US Treasury Department, the Huione Group, a financial conglomerate with ties to Cambodia’s ruling Hun family, has provided the gangs with financial and practical services. Like Latin American “narco-states” before them, these countries are well on the way to becoming “scam states”.

Is there international pressure to close them down?

Influenced partly by stories like the kidnapping of the actor Wang Xing, and even a popular film about scam hubs, “No More Bets”, China has launched an aggressive crackdown. There have been heavily publicised rescues of coerced workers in the Mekong countries; under Chinese pressure, local law enforcement has dismantled notorious scam hubs like the KK Park complex in Myawaddy, Myanmar, thought to have been run by Macau-based triads. Thai forces shelled several other hubs during a border conflict with Cambodia last year. China has arrested hundreds of thousands of people over scams, and in January it executed 11 members of the “Ming family” crime group, who had been extradited from Myanmar.

Is the situation improving?

Experts worry that police raids on compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar are largely for show: the bosses are often tipped off in advance. In any case, they have globalised their operations, popping up as far afield as Peru and the Philippines. Police even closed down an operation targeting Chinese citizens on the Isle of Man in 2024. But developments in AI may mean that the scammers are getting less reliant on human trafficking for language skills. One report on AI-assisted scams found that they rose by 450% in 2024-25 compared with 2023-24. The scammers now often use “deepfakes” of increasingly good quality to groom their victims.

A British computer scientist who pioneered a forerunner of cryptocurrencies has denied reports that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

An investigation by The New York Times used biographical details and writing style comparisons to make the case that Adam Back was the cryptocurrency’s enigmatic founder.

Who is Adam Back?

Back, a 55-year-old computer scientist from London, “has long been seen as a potential candidate to be Nakamoto”, said The Times. “A pioneer of early digital asset research in the 1990s”, he “has a long-standing background in cryptography, the techniques used to secure and verify digital information”. This includes developing Hashcash, “a proof-of-work system that later influenced Bitcoin” and was referenced by Nakamoto in his Bitcoin “white paper”.

Back dismissed The New York Times’ use of writing analyses to link him to the elusive Nakamoto as “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests”. In reference to the claim that he disappeared from Bitcoin message boards when “Satoshi” was at his busiest, Back insisted that he “did a lot of yakking” on the forums at the time. “I’m not Satoshi,” he said.

Why is Nakamoto’s identity a secret?

Since Bitcoin launched in 2008, Nakamoto has chosen to stay anonymous. All their communication was written under their pseudonym and no verifiable personal details have ever been released or revealed. Since 2011, they have given no public statements at all, their seeming disappearance giving them a “cult-like status among crypto enthusiasts”, said The Times.

This anonymity was very on-brand for Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency was designed to have no central authority; if the identity of a real person were known they could become a leader or figurehead, which might contradict the founding principle of decentralisation. There is a security element, too: Nakamoto is thought to own $78 billion worth of bitcoin, so remaining anonymous lessens the risk of extortion or kidnapping.

It’s also possible that the mysterious founder is not one person, but rather a team of developers or cryptographers. Either way, the years of speculation have added to Bitcoin’s profile and acted as a useful indirect marketing tool.

Has anyone else been suggested?

In 2014, Newsweek identified a Japanese-American systems engineer called Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. He disputed this, and the claim has “largely been debunked”, said the BBC.

The following year, Wired suggested Nakamoto could be a pseudonym for Australian computer scientist Craig Wright. Unlike Back and Dorian Nakamoto, Wright went public to assert he was indeed Nakamoto, until a UK High Court judge ruled he was not the Bitcoin founder and barred him from continuing to claim he was.

In 2024, an HBO documentary claimed that Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd was the real Nakamoto, a suggestion he described as “ludicrous”.

Of all the tools and executive authorities available to President Donald Trump, perhaps none has been wielded with as much naked transactional ambition as his ability to effectively pardon any federal convict for virtually any crime. Domestically, Trump’s penchant for pardoning has seen commutations extended to celebrities and lawmakers alike, often coming with an explicit expectation of quid pro quo. However, Trump’s use of political pardons hasn’t stopped at the nation’s borders; the president is increasingly using pardons with an international theater in mind, letting the world know that crossing America’s justice system may not be as final an act as it once was.

Here are the influential foreign figures Trump has pardoned over his two terms in office.

Changpeng Zhao

Although Trump has extended clemency to several cryptocurrency-associated figures over the years, his October 2025 pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao sparked the “most intense backlash of all crypto pardons,” said Benzinga. The move raised “immediate criticism” from lawmakers who said the pardon risked “serious ethical concerns.” Zhao, who was born in China before moving to Canada as a child, had previously pleaded guilty to charges that he enabled financial fraud and money laundering at the “world’s largest exchange for cryptocurrency or digital money on the internet,” CBS News said.

The “self-dealing aspect” of Trump’s pardoning of Zhao, in terms of the “benefit that it conferred on Trump and his family, and people in his inner circle,” is “unprecedented,” said former Justice Department pardon official Elizabeth Oyer to CBS. The pardon came amid the president’s pivot toward a “more friendly stance toward cryptocurrency than his predecessors,” the BBC said.

Juan Orlando Hernández

Elected as president of Honduras just two years before Trump, Juan Orlando Hernández, commonly known as JOH, earned his “place in infamy for the one-time U.S. ally in the war on drugs” in 2024 when he was convicted in New York City for cocaine trafficking, The Guardian said. Hernández’s actions “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig claimed during the trial, in part by protecting certain traffickers “with the full power of the state.”

Trump’s December 2025 pardon of Hernández came after the former Honduran leader “sent the president a four-page letter casting himself as a victim of ‘political persecution’” while “comparing his fate to that of the American president,” The New York Times said. Speaking about the pardon, Trump affirmed a sense of kinship with Hernández, who was, he said, “treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump.”

Aviem Sella

While not a widely known figure himself, Israeli businessman and former IDF officer Aviem Sella played a central role in one of the biggest intelligence breaches in American history, serving as recruiter and handler for American intelligence analyst-turned-spy Jonathan Pollard. Sella was indicted in absentia on multiple espionage counts in 1987, but was not required to be extradited to the United States for what U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova said was a “political offense,” said The New York Times.

Trump’s surprise pardon for Sella, delivered in the waning hours of his first term, was “requested” by Israeli officials to “close this unfortunate chapter in U.S.-Israel relations,” the White House said in a statement announcing the action. The pardon was “supported by the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, the United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Miriam Adelson.”

Ben Delo

Along with fellow BitMex founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed, British tech entrepreneur Ben Delo pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, failing to enact requisite money laundering protections at the widely used crypto exchange. The Biden administration’s investigation and prosecution of BitMex and its founders was “among the first and most significant” legal actions to “target the crypto market,” said Bloomberg. Trump’s March 2025 pardon of Delo, along with a host of other finance and entrepreneurial figures, showed there’s “never been a better time to be a white-collar crook,” Axios said.

In a statement thanking Trump for the pardon, Delo said his company had been targeted for being the “most successful crypto exchange of its kind,” with him and his colleagues “wrongfully made to serve as an example, sacrificed for political reasons and used to send inconsistent regulatory signals.”

A Belgian billionaire has a quiet, ambitious plan to create the “Dubai of the Caribbean” on the island of Nevis, said The Brussels Times. Olivier Janssens, who holds Nevisian citizenship through an investment scheme, has unveiled plans for “Destiny”, a “libertarian community with its own legal system” on the Caribbean island. But for some Nevisians, a crypto state in their midst is a step too far.

A ‘network state’

The “multibillion-dollar project” is likely to involve a “massive reshaping of the south coast of the island” where the development “is already displacing long-term residents by buying their land”, said the Financial Times. Plans for Destiny include “villas and medical clinics” surrounded by “lush green terraces and pools” – and, crucially, a libertarian identity that, in Janssens’ so-far woolly definition, will “let us do our things”.

It forms part of a wider trend known as the “network state” movement, in which tech and cryptocurrency billionaires are attempting to establish “their own, more libertarian, territories”. Many, for the time being, “remain theoretical”.

Destiny is closer to fruition than most because St Kitts and Nevis recently passed new legislation to allow the creation of so-called Special Sustainability Zones, where “innovative approaches to the governance of tech and digital assets” can be trialled, said Cryptopolitan. But for some Nevisians, the prospect of an unregulated “state within a state” and its impact on existing infrastructure, services and “community life” is a cause for concern.

‘Neo-colonialism’

The optics of a “foreign-led takeover” of Nevisian land have sparked a “fiery” debate, said Jam Radio. Former prime minister Timothy Harris described the project as an instrument of “neo-colonialism”, urging citizens to reject what he called a “return to plantation-era subjugation”.

Janssens has promised that Destiny will be “open to Nevisians and remain under government jurisdiction”, said the Daily Mail, and has pledged a “$50 million [£37.3 million] investment in Nevis’ infrastructure”. And not all residents are sceptical. The project could create “a lot of much-needed opportunities for Nevisians and Kittitians”, said The St Kitts and Nevis Observer. If it goes ahead, it may end up as the “envy of the entire Caribbean”.

Ultimately, Nevis stands at a “crossroads”, said St Maarten’s The Daily Herald. Destiny will serve as a “defining test of how far the island is willing to go in reimagining development, law, and partnership with global capital”.

Regulation of cryptocurrency investments are set to be toughened up in a move to boost protections for investors.

The Treasury has revealed that platforms where users buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin will be “backed to innovate and grow” as the government seeks to make the UK a “global destination for digital assets”.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is consulting on new rules to be introduced from 2027. A spokesperson for the City watchdog said “our goal is to have a regime that protects consumers, supports innovation, and promotes trust”.

Millions of people throughout the UK now own cryptocurrency, said ThisIsMoney, with numbers having “surged over the past year”.

How will new rules change how crypto is regulated?

Cryptocurrencies have become a popular alternative investment in recent years, helped by the bitcoin price hitting record highs.

Currently, crypto platforms have to register with the FCA only for money-laundering prevention purposes but the new rules will mean companies are “regulated in the same way as other financial products”, said The Guardian.

This creates a “shift from the current system”, said CoinCentral, and aligns the UK approach “more closely” with the US, while the EU has totally separate rules specifically for crypto.

The FCA said its changes could include new rules on what firms must tell investors “so people have the facts before they invest”, as well as new standards for exchanges to “keep trading safe and reliable”.

Some plans from earlier this year have been “diluted”, said the Financial Times. The regulator will no longer ban trading platforms from offering their own tokens, for example.

How will crypto regulation protect consumers?

Regulation could mean crypto firms are held to account more effectively, “so if you lose your money to a scam then you should be able to get help”, said The Sun.

New rules should also “make it easier for the government to find and address suspicious activity”, said ThisIsMoney.

Regulators will also be able to “impose sanctions or hold firms to account”, said The Independent.

But some areas of the new rules “remain undecided”, added the Financial Times.

The FCA said it would consult early in 2026 regarding whether the market should be covered by its consumer duty rules. These rules require regulated firms to ensure clients receive a good outcome.

Is cryptocurrency a safe investment?

More rules may be coming, but regulators continue to warn about the risks of cryptocurrency investing, said Reuters, especially that investors “should be prepared to lose all of their money”.

Commentators are describing the regulatory shift as a “watershed moment”, with David Heffron, expert in financial services regulation at Pinsent Masons, explaining it would help in “building trust and giving firms certainty”.

The consultation ends in February 2026 and the changes mean it will “likely only get easier” to invest in crypto, said MoneyToTheMasses. But crypto is still a “fundamentally risky investment” and will not be fully regulated in the UK until 2027.

“Bitcoin has proven to be one of the best-performing assets in modern history,” said Al Jazeera. With the value of cryptocurrency increasing “some 1,000 times” over the last decade, it was only a matter of time before governments and banks wanted in.

After being launched following the 2008 global financial crisis, bitcoin was widely dismissed as a “speculative asset with no intrinsic value”. But it has been taken increasingly seriously “by governments, financial institutions and investors alike”, with far-reaching implications for politics, the economy and the way we live.

‘Big bets’

“A number of countries have made big bets” on crypto in the last few years. El Salvador holds more than “$600 million worth of bitcoin reserves”, accepting the asset “as legal tender” from 2021 to 2025.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House marked an optimistic shift in the US’s recognition of crypto as a legitimate currency “after years of government-led crackdowns on the sector”. In January 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved bitcoin for spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which track real-time shifts in stock market value rather than futures. This move allowed investors “exposure to the asset on the stock exchange for the first time”.

Spot crypto ETFs also had “bipartisan support” in South Korea’s 2025 election, said The Block. Lee Jae-myung, of the centre-left Democratic Party, the election’s eventual winner, said crypto funds would “provide more opportunities for South Korea’s younger generation”.

Nigel Farage is an open “supporter of cryptocurrency” and has made Reform the first UK party “to accept donations in bitcoin”, said the BBC. A £9 million donation to Reform from Thailand-based British businessman Christopher Harborne, “the largest ever single donation by a living person to a British political party”, has raised questions about the role cryptocurrency investors may play in future elections.

Ethical quandaries

In Trump’s Washington “crypto is ascendant”, said The Economist. Trump-appointed regulators are “more permissive” and investors are “piling into it”, while pro-crypto lobbying groups are throwing their weight behind political candidates who support it.

The president and his family also promote crypto. In January, the launch of the $TRUMP coin, a cryptocurrency mostly owned by “companies associated with the Trump family”, pointed towards the president’s direct financial interest in crypto. But “clear conflicts of interest” could ultimately do “more harm than good” for the industry.

Trump’s crypto endeavours are just one of a “myriad of entanglements that government ethics watchdogs have warned about for a decade now”, said The Guardian. One of the “primary worries” is the potential for “foreign actors to purchase influence” with the president via “investment in his cryptocurrency”.

In the UK, ministers believe “donations made with cryptocurrency pose a risk to the integrity of the electoral system”, said The Guardian. It is particularly difficult to “work out” who controls or owns crypto wallets based abroad, opening the door to influence by “foreign powers or criminals”.

Ministers are working on legislation that would ban cryptocurrency electoral donations, but the “complex nature of cryptocurrency” means that the proposal is unlikely to be ready in time for next year’s Elections Bill.

Crypto is supposedly the currency of the future, but it is not doing so well presently. The sector has lost more than $1 trillion in value over the last few weeks.

The crypto industry is having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month,” said USA Today. Bitcoin has lost more than 10% of its value for the year, dropping from a high of $126,000 in October to under $90,000 last week. The drop in digital currency values is due to a “whirlwind of factors” that include shaky showings for artificial intelligence and technology stocks amid growing concerns about the overall economy. “No one can say” when the dust might settle.

“It was supposed to be crypto’s year,” said The Wall Street Journal. Since 2025 brought a “crypto-loving White House, Wall Street adoption and friendly legislation,” it seemed poised to erase the industry’s regulatory obstacles. Instead, the “sky-high expectations of a golden age” have foundered. Cryptocurrency’s original reputation was as an “antiestablishment asset” coming out of the Great Recession. Now the sector is trying to “go legit” but having trouble shedding its standing as the “deranged, foul-mouthed little sibling of Wall Street.”

What did the commentators say?

“Brutal” selloffs in the crypto sector happen “every few years, or whenever sentiment snaps,” said Emily Nicolle at Bloomberg. But those previous cycles did not match the “speed and scale” of crypto’s collapse in recent weeks. The difference this time is that crypto is now “woven into the fabric of Wall Street and the broader public markets.” That means its fate is now “tied to AI-fueled market optimism.” Amid growing fears of an AI bubble, though, it does not take much prompting to “spook investors into selling.”

Crypto in recent years has gone from an “object of mockery” to “broadly accepted, even encouraged” by mainstream financial institutions, said The Economist. That victory actually poses a problem. The “wider acceptance” has deepened crypto’s links to the broader financial markets, so that the “pain from a crypto crash will be felt more widely than in the past.” A government intervention seems remote, but “surprises can never be ruled out” in politics and in crypto.

What next?

Crypto believers see it as a “safe store of value against inflation and rising national debt,” said Marketplace. But the current instability comes amid “sticky inflation and a rising national debt.” The sector’s growing acceptance on Wall Street means your 401(k) probably includes some crypto stock. If the downturn lasts, that would produce “some knock-on effects on spending” in the broader economy, said Columbia Law School lecturer Todd Baker to the outlet.

There are now some fears of a “crypto winter,” said MarketWatch. But other observers say the sector is likely still in solid shape for the long term, thanks to its integration with financial markets. Banks like J.P. Morgan now accept crypto assets as collateral. We are not seeing a crypto winter, said Frontier Investments CEO Louis LaValle. “I think we’re watching bitcoin grow up.”

President Trump took another step into the muck last week, said Jim Geraghty in National Review, with an act “stunning in its shamelessness, recklessness, and moral inversion”: he officially pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the global crypto exchange Binance.

There aren’t many financial institutions “willing to do work with al-Qa’eda, Isis, Hamas, ransomware hackers, and kiddie-porn enthusiasts”, but Zhao’s Binance answered the call. Two years ago, however, the Chinese-born Canadian pleaded guilty to money laundering: his company agreed to pay $4.3 billion to the US authorities, and he himself paid a $50 million fine, was banned from running Binance and was sentenced to four months in jail.

But it was Binance – and Zhao still owns the bulk of Binance shares – that wrote the basic code of the “stablecoin” issued this year by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto firm. So could his pardon have anything to do with the fact his company “is helping put billions into the Trump family coffers”? Trump has been trying to cast Zhao’s prosecution as a Biden-era crypto witch-hunt, said Max Chafkin on Bloomberg. That doesn’t really wash, seeing as how court records reveal that Binance executives openly “joked about Hamas operatives using the service to buy weapons”.

Trump is actually on an unprecedented “run of pardoning financial crooks”, said Alex Kirshner on Slate. He has already “pardoned or commuted the sentences of 18 people or companies... guilty of fraud”. They include Trevor Milton, who cheated investors in his electric truck company Nikola, and Ross Ulbricht, who had been serving two life sentences for operating the dark-web drug marketplace Silk Road.

Pardoning Zhao invites a key player back into the “casino economy”, said Kyla Scanlon in The New York Times. Trump campaigned on the idea of rebuilding US manufacturing; instead he has helped create an economy “built on speculation and risk”. The biggest winners are the creators of pointless crypto tokens and companies selling grand promises about the future of artificial intelligence.

Trump’s Republicans have attacked the institutions that help cushion risk, such as the Federal Reserve, and have cut back the social safety net to fund corporate tax cuts. Ordinary folk “bear the downside risk, while corporations and the wealthy collect the upside”. But that’s the casino economy for you: at the casino, “the house always wins”.

What happened

President Donald Trump pardoned billionaire cryptocurrency magnate Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of Binance, the White House said Thursday. Zhao, commonly known as CZ, served four months in prison last year after he and his company pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering by terrorists, drug traffickers, purveyors of child sexual abuse material and other criminals.

Who said what

The pardon followed “months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company,” said The Wall Street Journal. That company, World Liberty Financial, “has generated significantly more income for the Trump family in the past year than their property portfolio ever has annually,” and “Binance has been one of the main drivers of the growth.” A Binance deal earlier this year involving the United Arab Emirates and a World Liberty stablecoin is “poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East adviser,” The New York Times said. But Zhao also “hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration” to push for his pardon.

“I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,” Trump said Thursday. “A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao was “prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency.”

What next?

Trump’s pardon “could pave the way” for Zhao to retake the head of the cryptocurrency exchange he cofounded, Reuters said, and “may offer the chance for Binance to expand in the United States.” It’s “unclear what the pardon means” for the $4.3 billion fine Binance agreed to pay the government, The Washington Post said.

A consortium of tech industry titans with links to the Trump administration took a significant step toward the creation of a new cryptocurrency-focused bank last week, after the White House on Wednesday gave conditional approval to charter the group’s planned financial institution. Named for J.R.R. Tolkien’s mountain of treasure in “The Hobbit,” Erebor Bank will focus on “technology companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that utilize virtual currencies,” the Treasury Department said in its approval letter. But before Erebor is even fully up and running, the bank’s crypto focus and right wing roots are already raising eyebrows.

‘Palmer’s political network will get this done’

Cofounded by defense-tech magnate Palmer Luckey and investor Joe Lonsdale, whose Palantir data analytics firm was launched with billionaire Peter Thiel (another Erebor backer), this new bank will join a “growing list” of institutions “seeking to serve as financial linchpins for a boom in nascent industries including crypto,” said Bloomberg. Erebor was granted its “preliminary and conditional” charter by the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) “just four months” after applying in June, said the Financial Times. That's a “sign of the Trump administration’s initiative to lower regulatory hurdles” and “encourage new banking entrants” that focus on digital currencies.

While the White House has pushed for more crypto-investment and deregulation, the speed with which Erebor has moved through the federal chartering process is, by the bank’s own admission, a deliberate feature of the group’s founders. “Palmer’s political network will get this done,” said an Erebor fundraising memo obtained by Business Insider in August. Luckey, brother-in-law to former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, is a major Republican donor, alongside Thiel and Lonsdale. “In theory,” said Ja’han Jones at MSNBC, a bank like Erebor could even “prove beneficial to the Trump family,” given the family’s various “ongoing investments in cryptocurrencies.”

In the context of the Trump administration’s “‘pay to play’ Washington,” where “loyalty to MAGA and a demonstrated willingness to provide money when needed are the only keys needed for government approvals,” it “doesn’t take much imagination” to see Erebor being approved “very, very quickly,” said Columbia University lecturer and financial services expert Todd Baker on Substack in June. “I’d be willing to lay odds that they’ll be approved and open by year end.”

Political heat and regulatory hurdles

Now conditionally chartered, there are still a number of “conditions set by the OCC” that Erebor needs to meet before it can fully “open its virtual doors,” said Axios. The process, which includes compliance and security checks, is expected to take “several months.” But, one insider said to FT, the expedited timeline for Erebor’s full approval is a “reflection of its extremely conservative business plan,” with the final product being not simply a “wacky, techno crypto bank.”

Promises of conservative staidness notwithstanding, Erebor’s progress has earned the attention of consumer protection advocate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “In a free market, credit flows fairly to businesses because they can use the money productively,” Warren said in a statement following Erebor’s charter approval. “Not to the president’s cronies because of their political connections.”

‘The era of the illiquid millionaire is here’

Allison Schrager at Bloomberg

“Almost one-fifth of U.S. households have a net worth of more than $1 million,” says Allison Schrager. But “most of that wealth is on paper.” Americans “invest in markets” via “retirement accounts,” but these are “often worth less” than “other kinds of financial assets.” The second “big source of wealth is housing,” but a “house, too, is illiquid,” and selling one “involves substantial transaction costs.” If “20% of the population is worth $1 million,” wealth “does not mean what it used to.”

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‘Teapot Dome. Watergate. They’re nothing compared to this.’

Jacob Silverman at The New York Times

“While campaigning, Trump announced his cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial” and his “namesake memecoin,” says Jacob Silverman. Trump and his family have since “accrued billions of dollars in paper wealth through crypto ventures.” With World Liberty, Trump has “created a powerful vehicle for those seeking influence.” It’s unprecedented: No past “executive branch scandals” featured this “scale of mixing of personal and government interests, much less the sheer accumulation of profit.”

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‘Get over yourself and throw a party’

Gwen Egan at The Boston Globe

“Only 3.9% of Americans hosted or attended a social event on an average weekend or holiday in 2024,” says Gwen Egan. To blame: the “rampant self-optimization culture that tells people to avoid situations with social friction” and “influencers who glorify solo nights spent at home.” This “hyper-individualistic self-care culture says the efforts we make purely for the sake of the happiness of others are worth less than the efforts we make toward improving ourselves.” Socialization is a “basic human need.”

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‘Trump’s plan to pay the military during the government shutdown should worry every American’

Christopher Mirasola at the San Francisco Chronicle

While it “may seem laudable to pay military personnel who otherwise would have missed this week’s paycheck due to the government shutdown, this act was a brazen repudiation of the Constitution’s construct of separated powers,” says Christopher Mirasola. By “usurping Congress’ power to fund the armed forces, the president is attacking the foundations of our constitutional protections against executive tyranny,” all while directing an “ever-expanding campaign of military force against” U.S. cities.

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The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has softened his sceptical views on the future of stablecoins in the UK, saying it would be wrong to dismiss the cryptocurrency “as a matter of principle”. Writing in the Financial Times, Bailey recognised their potential for “innovation in payments systems” but warned that the new technology “must still answer old central banking questions” to maintain public trust in money, which is “critical” to all economies.

What are stablecoins?

Stablecoin is a form of cryptocurrency, the digital currencies operated by private companies or individuals rather than central banks like the Bank of England (BoE) or the European Central Bank. Crypto, which is currently unregulated in the UK, has seen a major rise in recent years, based on risky “speculative trading”, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.

The most popular and well-known stablecoin is Tether (USDT), with other leading stablecoins including USD Coin (USDC-USD) and Stasis Euro (EURS-USD).

How is it different from other cryptocurrency?

Unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are completely detached from centralised financial institutions, stablecoins are “pegged” to tangible assets, like US dollars, the British pound, or gold prices.

They are designed to hold a steady value, only rarely dipping above or below a designated ratio. For example, a stablecoin with perfect efficiency to the US dollar, would consistently value one “coin” as one dollar. Some stablecoins have a reserve controlled by an algorithm to generate more coins or remove coins according to supply and demand.

Why is the UK government interested in it?

The market for this category of cryptocurrency is already valued at $200 billion (£148 billion) globally. With London responsible for 40% of foreign exchange turnover, the prospect of formal UK participation in stablecoins is an attractive one, according to a report by Innovate Finance.

The attraction of stablecoin is considerable. It bypasses traditional currency conversions, and facilitates “more predictable” and “lower-cost” payments internationally, said Yahoo Finance.

The government is intent on driving forward “developments in blockchain technology”, including stablecoins, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in her Mansion House speech in July.

The BoE aims to publish a consultation paper, setting out a blueprint for the “UK’s systemic stablecoin regime”, to ensure the UK will “reap the benefits” of the new currency, said Bailey in the FT. The BoE had previously proposed that stablecoin holdings would be capped at as little as £20,000, with no interest offered to customers.

The European Union, Hong Kong, Japan (since 2023) and the United States have all implemented rules to make trading more transparent, a step which has been broadly welcomed by the crypto community.

What are the concerns?

Stablecoins can still be risky, even when pegged to tangible assets. If a stablecoin strays too far from its target value and this cannot be corrected, it can be “depegged”.

On a larger scale, if stablecoins were left unregulated, central banks could be caught on a tightrope. If a stablecoin crashes, the fallout could trigger “fire sales” – rapid sales at significantly low prices due to financial distress – to establish an equilibrium, said Bloomberg.

Conversely, if stablecoins “prove their worth”, allowing users to exchange and store vast sums of money, the “monetary monopoly” of the banks would be undermined.

And as with other cryptocurrencies, an unregulated system can be exploited for illegal activity. Trading is “anonymous, fast and cheap”, making stablecoins highly attractive for criminals to use to conduct scams or launder funds.

‘ESPN has discarded brilliant journalism for squirts of memebrain swill’

Aaron Timms at The Guardian

For a “certain segment of American sports fans, all change is automatically bad,” says Aaron Timms. The “outrage prompted by the latest upheavals at ESPN certainly fits the pattern of involuntary fan resistance to change.” Hiring influencers is the “latest move in ESPN’s drive to appeal to younger viewers,” but this “symbolizes a broader rot at the heart of ESPN.” A “company that once set the news agenda in sports is now just another sweaty social media setup.”

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‘Dr. Prasad, the FDA’s Grim Reaper’

The Wall Street Journal editorial board

The FDA’s Dr. Vinay Prasad is “killing life-saving experimental cancer treatments and undercutting biotech innovation,” says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Prasad “wants drug makers to run bigger and longer trials to demonstrate with 100% certainty that medicines work, even if this means patients die because of the FDA’s delay.” The “biggest danger to public health these days is regulators like Dr. Prasad who loathe drug makers more than they care about helping patients.”

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‘Bad Bunny’s concert message is a lifeline to Puerto Ricans and Dominicans here, too’

Joa Rojas at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Bad Bunny’s concerts are “part of a global regreso — a worldwide virtual homecoming,” says Joe Rojas. Bad Bunny has “become a symbol of hope and resilience for the Puerto Rican diaspora.” His residency was “both a love letter to his homeland and a bold act of defiance against the tired narrative of a struggling island.” For an “island battered by hurricanes, earthquakes, and fiscal crisis, that surge was a vital shot of adrenaline.”

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‘Down and out on the crypto frontier’

Whitney Curry Wimbish at The American Prospect

Wyoming is the “underappreciated heart of the American cryptocurrency boom,” says Whitney Curry Wimbish. Lawmakers have “passed more than 50 industry-friendly laws over the last eight years, more than anywhere else in the country,” and “Wyoming’s political leaders want to base the entire state’s economy on crypto.” With “lawmakers in both parties falling all over themselves to win their favor and their campaign donations, you can understand the crypto elite’s delusions of grandeur, even amid enthusiastic ignorance.”

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What happened

The Trump family's World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency token started trading publicly Monday, jumping in value then losing most of those gains as the day progressed.

The value of their cache of tokens still rose to about $5 billion, however, making it the family's "most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio," The Wall Street Journal said.

Who said what

World Liberty, launched during last year's presidential campaign, has thrived as President Donald Trump "drove the growth of the crypto industry from the White House," the Journal said. Critics say the company is a "potential vehicle to influence" Trump and that its growth has been "spurred by partners and investors who are seeking help from the White House," like crypto exchange Binance, whose "convicted founder has been seeking a presidential pardon."

World Liberty's management team — including the Trumps and CEO Zach Witkoff, the son of presidential envoy Steve Witkoff — cannot currently sell their tokens, the company said. But the Trump family was "still assured a considerable payday" of at least $500 million thanks to an "unusual insider arrangement" with an obscure Las Vegas-based firm, Alt5, The New York Times said. The White House said the president had no conflicts of interest.

What next?

The "close corporate ties between Alt5 and World Liberty might have attracted an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the past," the Times said, but there has been no publicly disclosed reviews of the arrangement under the "crypto-friendly securities lawyer" Trump named to lead the agency.

'Congress should reject cryptocurrency double standard'

Tim Ryan and Kendrick Meek at Newsweek

Why "single out crypto? The president isn't banned from owning shares in oil companies while setting energy policy, or owning real estate while shaping tax policy," say Tim Ryan and Kendrick Meek. Targeting "crypto just because it's new or politically charged is more about optics." If the "goal is to prevent self-enrichment, it makes little sense to restrict crypto holdings while allowing broad discretion over other financial assets that can just as easily create conflicts of interest."

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'The Supreme Court is writing a slow-motion eulogy for one of America's greatest achievements'

Maureen Edobor at Slate

August "marks the 60th anniversary of the passing of the Voting Rights Act," yet "as we approach this milestone, we find ourselves not in a moment of reflection or rededication, but in a state of legal free fall," says Maureen Edobor. Pending "decisions threaten to gut what remains of this once powerful statute, which has already been largely hollowed out by the Roberts court." The act was "always meant to be a living safeguard, its strength rooted in community enforcement."

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'Trump raises the ante in Ukraine'

Robert Jordan at The Dallas Morning News

President Donald Trump has "announced a dramatic surge in weapons deliveries to Ukraine," a "striking contrast with the disastrous Oval Office meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump in March," says Robert Jordan. This "may represent a turning point, following a haphazard series of criticisms of Zelenskyy, the bizarre suspension of aid to Ukraine by an unnamed someone in the Pentagon, and an apparent lack of communication with the White House." It "may be that American policy on Ukraine has finally got it right."

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'"We're creating miscarriages with medicine": abortion lessons from Sweden'

Cecelia Nowell at The Nation

Sweden's "use of abortion pills has important lessons for the United States, where bans are pushing many more patients into the second trimester before they are able to see an abortion provider," says Cecelia Nowell. Even as "U.S. abortion advocates continue to raise awareness of the medications' safety, in the face of attacks by the GOP-controlled federal government, few acknowledge the fact that the pills are also used safely much later in pregnancy in many parts of the world."

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'The Viennese paradox: Urban superstar and right-wing whipping boy'

Lee Hockstader at The Washington Post

Vienna is an "enviable success story," but the "Viennese paradox is that the city has been seized on by antimigrant forces who paint it as a polyglot pariah," says Lee Hockstader. "'Othering' multicultural cities is a familiar page from the populist playbook," but the "difference is that those cities, like many major U.S. metropolises, struggle with real dysfunction." Vienna's "problems are trivial by comparison." But Vienna's "integration project has run up against Austria's daunting obstacles to naturalization."

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'Crypto renaissance means it's time to protect banks'

Bloomberg editorial board

With the "price of digital assets testing the boundaries of plausibility, and Congress promising legislation to boost the industry further, now might be a good time for bank regulators to take notice," says the Bloomberg editorial board. Before the "traditional banking system gets further intertwined with the blockchain-based economy, regulators should make some prudent adjustments." When it "comes to the risks posed by this chaotic industry, no one should assume that this time is different."

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'Trump's authoritarian manipulation of language'

Renée Graham at The Boston Globe

Some people "couldn't help but notice how quickly a president casually using profanity has become normalized," says Renée Graham. Donald Trump's "public use of profanity without apology or repercussions points to how he has upended language over his decade in the political spotlight — a hallmark of authoritarianism." When "Trump swears, he isn't just coarsening language. It becomes yet another way of torching the decorum once expected of presidents." Authoritarianism "leaves its stain on everything, including language."

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'There is still only one way out for Israel and Iran'

Hillel Schenker at The Nation

The "only way to end the possibility that the Iranians will decide to go nuclear" is "by a negotiated agreement with Iran," says Hillel Schenker. The "deal would have to include clear and verifiable inspection elements, as well as a commitment from both sides to stop threatening each other's existence." If "that is not achieved, the danger is that the Iranians may choose the North Korean option and rapidly race toward the completion of nuclear weapons."

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Quantum computing, the prospect of advanced computations beyond the binary limitations of ones or zeros, may be the harbinger of advancements to come. But cryptocurrency adherents are starting to wonder if their digital monetary system is ready for what this new age of data processing might bring.

Preparing for a 'potential catastrophe'

The "technological leap" of quantum computing could "pose new risks" to cryptocurrency users and potentially "undermine the cryptographic backbone of blockchain," said quantum computer developer Yuval Boger at Forbes. Although the "immediate risks are low," the future could see "large-scale, error-corrected quantum computers" capable of running algorithms that could break the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) used by bitcoin as one of the industry's main security protocols.

While current quantum computers "aren't yet powerful enough," the "risk is real in the long term," said Isaac Kim, a computer science professor at UC Davis, in a recent interview with the crypto research firm Presto Labs. Despite "slight differences" between the levels of risk for each different type of cryptocurrency, "any blockchain that uses ECC, like bitcoin and ethereum, are vulnerable."

"Crypto is underprepared," researcher Rick Maeda said in an interview with CoinDesk on Monday. "The biggest risk is just waiting too long."

Although some members of the crypto community are willing to "shrug off" the looming threat posed by quantum computing, "behind closed doors," a number of leading figures in the field are "concerned about a potential catastrophe," said Decrypt. Experts now believe the industry has "less than a decade, even a handful of years" to enact "contingency plans." And even that might be optimistic: A new paper published last month by Google Quantum AI researcher Craig Gidney suggests that the RSA encryption used by bitcoin could be overcome using "20 times fewer quantum resources than previously estimated," Benzinga said.

'Post-quantum' protections

Given how serious the threat to cryptocurrency from quantum computing is, a "proactive approach" is "critical" to preempt disruption to an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, researchers from the University of Kent's School of Computing said in a late 2024 study detailing what such an approach might look like. The only way to prevent wide-scale quantum disruptions for an asset like bitcoin, the authors said, is "to upgrade — replace — the currently used public-key cryptosystems" to ones that have "no known vulnerabilities to quantum attacks." This is known as "post-quantum cryptosystems."

That type of complete "protocol update" would "take the cryptocurrency offline for 76 days," Fortune said. More "realistically," bitcoin could dedicate just a quarter of its server space to the upgrade — allowing users to "continue to mine and trade at a slower rate" — in which case the downtime would last an estimated ten months.

Broadly, that downtime risk speaks to what Maeda said is a "key barrier" to addressing the looming challenge. "It's difficult to create a way to monetize this," Maeda said to CoinDesk. But those preparations need to happen sooner rather than later, he added. "We can't wait until the threat is real to start taking it seriously. By then, it's already too late."

The relentless "mechanical howl" of a cryptocurrency mining facility has become "the soundtrack to life for hundreds of residents" in Granbury, a small rural town in Texas, said The Guardian.

"It echoes across agricultural land and forests, chasing away deer. It seeps into walls, vibrating bedrooms and dinner tables." One resident said it was as though a "jet engine is forever stationed nearby".

Bitcoin mining has exploded in the US over the past decade, particularly in the wake of Donald Trump's re-election to the White House and his embrace of cryptocurrency. But it's an energy-intensive process: the powerful computers that create and protect the cryptocurrency need fans on the go constantly to cool them down. And across rural, mostly Republican towns, residents are getting sick of the noise – and getting sick, full stop.

The 'mental and physical' toll

Much of America's Bitcoin mining industry is in Texas, said Time, "home to giant power plants, lax regulation, and crypto-friendly politicians". In Granbury, where Marathon – one of the world's largest Bitcoin holders – has a mine, a group of people are being "worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses". Some were experiencing fainting spells, chest pains, migraines and panic attacks; others were "wracked by debilitating vertigo and nausea. The mine is causing "mental and physical" health issues, said one ears, nose, and throat specialist based in Granbury. "Imagine if I had vuvuzela in your ear all the time."

Their "singular grievance": the "dull aural hum" of the nearby Bitcoin mining facility. According to local law enforcement, it was "exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis" when it first opened in 2024, said Time. Similar medical complaints were registered near facilities in Arkansas and North Dakota. However, a separate third-party study commissioned by the county in November 2024 showed that sound levels stayed below legal limits.

While there are not yet any major medical studies on the impact of living near large Bitcoin mines and data centres, scientists are increasingly linking "prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage".

The political battleground

Bitcoin mining "boomed in the US" partly due to China's "crackdown" in 2021 over environmental concerns, said the BBC. Now at least 137 Bitcoin mines exist across 21 US states, and there are reports of "many more planned", attracted by "record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy" to power the computers.

Trump said he wants to turn the US into the world's leading crypto-miner, but this has "implications for rural communities". In some places, his crypto-friendly policies are "meeting resistance" from the very voters who "drove his return to the White House".

This conflict between Republican allegiance and Bitcoin resistance is "being played out nationwide", which could spell trouble for Trump's pro-crypto agenda. Officials in Republican-voting areas are "likely to find themselves coming under continued pressure" from local residents who oppose Bitcoin mining expansion. "If this happens, could Trump's crypto dreams be derailed in his own backyard?".

The first legal battles around the health impacts of Bitcoin mining are "bringing home the realities of an industry" that at first glance seemed "removed from the real world".

With cryptocurrency investments continuing to peak, many wealthy investors in the crypto space are being subjected to a series of violent encounters with thieves, which have come to be known as wrench attacks. These attacks are increasingly commonplace as the public is starting to feel more angst toward the crypto industry, experts say.

Such attacks can involve kidnapping, torture and coercion, all done with the intent of trying to obtain the information of wealthy crypto moguls. Many individuals are living in fear as a result.

What is a wrench attack?

This is a colloquialism referring to "violent physical attacks on cryptocurrency investors," said NPR, with the goal of obtaining the investor's cryptocurrency or bitcoin password. The phrase was coined by an online meme that "mocked how easily high-tech security can be undone by hitting someone with a wrench until they give up passwords," said The Associated Press.

Experts are noting that sophisticated cybersecurity measures may not be useful under the threat of physical violence. Investors "are very proud of the digital locks they put around their crypto to guard it," crypto reporter Jeff John Roberts said to NPR. But "even if you have really, really good digital security, if you're being beaten with a wrench, you're probably going to tell the password, and the security won't do you any good anymore."

One high-profile attack happened in France in January, when abductors kidnapped crypto executive David Ballard and "cut one of his fingers off and bound his girlfriend and put him in a car," said Roberts. Another case involved a man who was reportedly "kidnapped and tortured for nearly three weeks in a townhouse in New York City in an effort to separate him from his fortune."

Why are wrench attacks happening?

The attacks mark a notable shift in strategy for crypto thieves; stealing crypto is "almost as old as cryptocurrency itself, but it's usually done by hacking. North Korean state hackers alone are believed to have stolen billions of dollars' worth of crypto in recent years," said the AP. In-person attacks represent a ramping up of violence against these investors.

Crypto has "surged in value, with bitcoin up 54% in the last year, minting a whole new array of potential deep-pocketed targets," said The Wall Street Journal. That is giving thieves new motivations to physically target people; beyond this, a "vast amount of personal data has been stolen and dumped in the past decade," allowing thieves to find out significant personal information about their victims. Cybercriminals "have become adept at figuring out their victims' home address by cross-referencing databases and even using paid sources of information." This type of data is "often made public in order to threaten and de-anonymize their victims, a form of online attack known as doxxing."

As crypto becomes more ubiquitous in the financial market, the statistics on wrench attacks keep rising. There were "eight reported physical attacks against people owning Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency" in 2023, according to Fortune, while there were 24 in 2024. The issue has become so widespread that a startup, AnchorWatch, which helps crypto owners insure their digital assets, has now gotten involved; the company "succeeded in persuading insurance giant Lloyd's of London to include wrench attacks in the policy that AnchorWatch offers to its customers."

Crypto "should be insurable. Since you can transfer it on chain, it's easy to see, and you have a better chance to recover it," Becca Rubenfeld, the cofounder of AnchorWatch, said to Fortune. The nature of these attacks "can make it seem amateurish, but it doesn't mean it's less dangerous."

What happened

Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, said Thursday that cybercriminals had hacked the company, stealing sensitive user data for a scheme to rob customers of crypto assets and extort the company.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Coinbase for allegedly overstating its active users in securities filings, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Who said what

Coinbase said in an SEC filing that an undisclosed number of user names, addresses and government ID images were stolen by someone paying multiple now-fired "contractors or employees working in support roles outside the United States." It estimated it would have to spend $180 million to $400 million to fix the situation and reimburse customers.

The stolen data allowed the hacker to "conduct social engineering attacks" on users to "try to trick them into sending their funds," CEO Brian Armstrong said. Coinbase said the hackers had demanded $20 million in bitcoin to not release the user data, but the company instead would offer that same amount for information about the criminals. "We will prosecute you and bring you to justice," Armstrong said. "You have my answer."

What next?

The ongoing SEC investigation is a rare crypto-linked case that "began during the Biden administration and has continued" under President Donald Trump, the Times said. Since Trump took office, "the SEC has dropped more than a dozen lawsuits and investigations targeting crypto firms," including a separate 2023 case against Coinbase, and "largely disbanded its specialized crypto unit."

President Donald Trump claims not to email or text and has been impressed that "everything is computer" inside a Tesla. But for all of his Luddite tendencies, there's one field of technology he has embraced since his return to the White House: cryptocurrency. Trump has positioned his administration as a champion of the digital currency industry, and his adoption of crypto is also widely believed to be an avenue for personal enrichment.

'Eviscerating' financial boundaries

The "winds are shifting" at the Securities and Exchange Commission under Trump as the agency moves toward a "more structured, innovation-friendly approach to digital assets," said Forbes. At the same time, the president's personal and familial involvement in the crypto field — including the launch and sale of his eponymous $TRUMP memecoin — has "intensified scrutiny" of the agency's "independence." In particular, Trump's recently unveiled World Liberty Financial, a firm "largely owned by a Trump family corporate entity," is "eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy," said The New York Times. As "not only a major crypto dealer," Trump is also the "industry's top policymaker" who has "leveraged" his position in office in "ways that have benefited the industry and in some cases his own company."

The impact of Trump's crypto participation extends beyond his personal wealth. In the past, there may have been Democratic lawmakers "sort of amenable to supporting" crypto-favorable legislation, said Duke University lecturing fellow on economics Lee Reiners to The Hill. However, they are now "getting a bit skittish" over Trump's "blatant" mixing of "financial interest with his political power."

A 'sea change' or a 'crypto winter'?

Trump's crypto focus and his efforts to roll back some of the restrictions imposed during his predecessor's administration have "unleashed a flurry of crypto deals" by companies "seeking to capitalize on lighter U.S. regulation," said The Wall Street Journal. There is "genuine interest" in the market for "taking advantage of this regulatory moment," said Ryne Miller, the co-chair of the crypto practice at law firm Lowenstein Sandler, to the Journal.

At the same time, the Trump administration's crypto focus means that assets with "high price volatility" could pose risks "not only for investors but also potentially for financial stability" as a whole, said the Bank of Italy in a report published Tuesday. The risk is particularly acute given the "growing interconnections between the digital asset ecosystem, the traditional financial sector and the real economy," the Bank's report said.

The report is "one of the first to have been published since Trump's imposition of global tariffs unleashed market turmoil," said Bloomberg. The "extreme negative sentiment" surrounding Trump's existing tariffs and future escalations is one of the "converging signals" suggesting an upcoming "new 'crypto winter,'" said industry leader Coinbase in its April monthly outlook.

In Washington, however, Trump continues to push the loosening of crypto regulations and his own crypto investments, signaling a "total sea change" from just months ago, said crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter to The Hill. Doomsaying predictions of global crypto collapse are just the work of "short-term folks in the industry that can't see the forest for the trees."

In 2021, El Salvador caught the world's attention by becoming the first country to make cryptocurrency legal tender, alongside the US dollar.

Last December, as the price of bitcoin broke $100,000 (£77,765) for the first time, the young president Nayib Bukele posted on social media that the Central American nation's crypto holdings had more than doubled in value. But now – as the price for securing a $1.4 billion (£1.1 billion) loan deal from the International Monetary Fund – the country has had to roll back its controversial bitcoin policies.

Salvadoran businesses are now free to decide whether or not to accept bitcoin, and taxes are no longer payable in the cryptocurrency. "The potential risks of the bitcoin project will be diminished significantly, in line with Fund policies," the IMF said. Effectively, bitcoin's days as legal tender in El Salvador are over.

'Cryptocurrency paradise'

Bukele's embrace of bitcoin was part of an attempt to "rebrand the tiny and impoverished" nation as a "surfing and cryptocurrency paradise", said the Financial Times. He announced plans to build a "Bitcoin City" in the jungle, "powered by geothermal energy on the slopes of a volcano".

The president claimed cryptocurrency would bring the "70% of Salvadorans who do not use traditional banks into the financial system", said France24. "Swatting away warnings about volatility risks", he ploughed an "undisclosed amount of public money into cryptocurrencies".

But the IMF always opposed Bukele's adoption of bitcoin, said the BBC, and warned that it would be an obstacle to any financial assistance. For a long time, the Salvadoran economy has "teetered on the edge of default", as the IMF stayed "wary" of lending to the country while the volatile currency – with its "potential use in money-laundering and other crimes" – was legal tender, said The Economist.

'More costs than benefits'

El Salvador is still "a focal point for the global bitcoin community", said Forbes. But the mood is now "somewhat subdued" among crypto enthusiasts, one local journalist told the news site.

"A lot of international bitcoiners moved to El Salvador for the Bitcoin Law; some Salvadorans returned," said Joe Nakamoto. "Now, doubt about the country's future with regards to bitcoin has crept in."

But bitcoin's "demotion may be more of a blessing than a concession", said The Economist. Crypto has brought El Salvador "more costs than benefits". The much-promised investment and tourism "have been small beer", while financial gains have been "meagre at best", because the currency "never really caught on". According to a poll published in January by Universidad Centroamericana, 92% of Salvadorans didn't use it at all last year.

Overall, the policy has cost $375 million (£291 million), according to estimates by rating agency Moody's – a sum that "far exceeds the profits on bitcoin holdings, which could still evaporate". There is still no Bitcoin City.

Bukele's "obsession with cryptocurrency has done little to ease El Salvador's economic woes", said the magazine. He is "just the latest crypto-utopian to see his wild ideas dissolve on contact with reality".

Donald Trump's plans to establish a government stockpile of cryptocurrencies took a notable step forward this past weekend, as the president unveiled the five assets he plans to include in his federal crypto reserve. The U.S. will be the "Crypto Capital of the World," Trump said in a Truth Social post touting relatively low-profile assets like XRP, solana and cardano as the first currencies to join better-known brands bitcoin and ether in a stockpile designed to "elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the value of the currencies named has skyrocketed in the wake of Trump's announcement.

At the same time, Trump's crypto-forward plans for the American economy have begun alarming financial experts who warn that crypto's extreme market volatility and susceptibility to manipulation could spell trouble for the country. As Trump continues pushing for a national cryptocurrency stockpile, why are economists raising their red flags, and what — if anything — can they do about it?

What did the commentators say?

Trump's crypto plan has produced a backlash from "conservatives and even ardent crypto backers" who cited concerns over "giveaways to an already wealthy community" and "delegitimizing the digital currency industry," The New York Times said. Some Republicans criticized the plan to use tax dollars to purchase crypto's "risky assets" rather than simply using the money for "paying down the national debt." Other critics pointed out that both Trump and his crypto czar, David Sacks, stand to personally benefit from the boost to the crypto industry.

Trump's announcement was met with an "unusual amount of skepticism among crypto and tech bigwigs," Forbes said, as insiders questioned the decision to "include assets other than 'digital gold' bitcoin in the fund." Those lesser assets differ from bitcoin by being "more akin to tech investments," James Butterfill, the head of research at asset manager CoinShares, said to Reuters. As currently understood, Butterfill said, Trump's plan "suggests a more patriotic stance toward the broader crypto technology space," rather than utilizing the "fundamental qualities" of each individual asset. With bitcoin as the "most battle tested and decentralized" of the cryptocurrencies, CNBC said, some observers worry that Trump's inclusion of non-bitcoin crypto "invites the government to pick winners and losers in the crypto market."

"People should be calling this what it is, which is a crypto bailout," said journalist Adam Serwer on Bluesky. Referencing members of the Trump family who have launched their own crypto businesses in recent months, he added: "They're cutting cancer research so they can bailout rich, degenerate gamblers."

"Borrowing more to 'invest' in bitcoin is about the worst idea I've heard," said Hoover Institute economist John Cochrane in a panel survey organized by the University of Chicago Booth's Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets. "It will end up in Trump coin or similar." Andrew Lo, an economist at MIT Sloan, was similarly blunt in his survey response: "This can't possibly be a serious question." Of the more than three dozen economists surveyed by the Clark Center, none endorsed the proposal.

What next?

Crypto analysts from Bernstein Wealth Management — "arguably the most mainstream group covering digital asset industry," said Forbes — have cited "material unresolved questions" with Trump's proposal, including how the funds will be distributed across the various named assets, how the government will fund the project and whether such a reserve can be "created merely by [the] president's executive order," Business Insider said. Trump's proposal "lacks details on size, timing and whether it will be managed by the Federal Reserve or another new or existing entity," said Andrew O'Neill, the digital assets managing director for S&P Global Ratings, to Forbes.

Analysts now look ahead to this coming Friday's "first-of-its-kind" White House cryptocurrency summit, which will include "founders, CEOs and investors from the industry," The Hill said.

North Korea appears to have pulled off the world's biggest heist, another worrying sign of the hermit kingdom's growing prowess in cybercrime.

State-backed hackers stole about $1.5 billion from cryptocurrency exchange Bybit last week, according to the FBI. That's more than the largest known bank theft of all time, when Saddam Hussein stole $1 billion from Iraq's central bank on the eve of the 2003 war.

Pyongyang agents took more in the attack on the popular platform than all the funds stolen by North Korean cybercriminals last year, according to cryptoanalysts Chainalysis: more than $1.3 billion. Leader Kim Jong Un is increasingly relying on "elite units" of hackers to prop up the regime's "failing economy", said The Telegraph.

The 'magnum opus'

Just after 2pm on Friday 21 February, a "notorious group of hackers" pulled off what could be "their magnum opus", said The Independent. In just minutes, they stole from one of the world's most popular crypto exchanges and "funnelled" the digital currency "across the internet to anonymous wallets".

Investigators were able to follow the funds in real time using the blockchain – the online ledger of every crypto transaction. They noted a pattern of laundering "closely mirroring a technique" used by The Lazarus Group: one of the world's "most sophisticated hacking operations".

The group, allegedly "backed by North Korea since its inception in 2009", caused "worldwide chaos" in 2017 with the WannaCry ransomware attacks, which infected 200,000 computers across 150 countries – including NHS systems. But this latest theft would be the group's "largest strike to date" – the haul is equivalent to North Korea's entire annual defence budget.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has called for a "war against Lazarus", issuing a $140 million bounty to recover the funds. The move, a first for the industry, could mark the beginning of "coordinated global action" to "take down Lazarus".

A 'haven' for hackers

In the past, Pyongyang "relied on its elite hacking cadres to conduct espionage or steal trade secrets", said The Telegraph. Science prodigies are identified at a young age, and "pushed to compete in international maths and programming competitions".

But increasingly, these hackers are being used as "a weapon of economic warfare": a way to "bolster the coffers" of a regime battered by sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic. And the "virtually unregulated" cryptocurrency industry is a "haven" for hackers.

Attacks by North Korean groups have "plagued the industry for years", said The New York Times.

Last year, hackers linked to the country stole more than $1.3 billion in cryptocurrency: a "dramatic jump" from the $660 stolen in 2023, reported The Guardian, and about 61% of the $2.2 billion stolen globally. The proceeds of The Lazarus Group's "audacious thefts" are believed to have funded the regime's nuclear and missile programmes.

"Hackers linked to North Korea have become notorious for their sophisticated and relentless tradecraft, often employing advanced malware, social engineering, and cryptocurrency theft to fund state-sponsored operations and circumvent international sanctions," Chainalysis said in its report.

These attackers are getting "better and faster at massive exploits".

The president of Argentina is facing legal action and calls for his impeachment after he promoted cryptocurrency on social media.

Javier Milei's controversial post "caused a political firestorm", said The New York Times, with opponents describing him as a "crypto scammer".

'Rug pull'

On Friday, Milei, a former private sector economist, posted on X about the $LIBRA coin which he promised would help fund small businesses and start-ups.

He shared a link to buy it, causing its price to "shoot up", said the BBC, but within a few hours, he deleted the post and the cryptocurrency "nosedived" in value, meaning investors lost most of their money.

He's been accused of a "rug pull" – where promoters of a cryptocurrency deliberately "draw in buyers", only to stop trading activity and "make off with the money raised from sales", said the broadcaster. But Argentina's presidential office insisted that the decision to remove the post was to avoid "speculation" following public reaction to the post.

"Few Argentines" were financially affected by the currency's crash, said the Financial Times, because analysis of X posts suggested most $LIBRA buyers were in the US and Asia, but the episode has still caused a headache for him at home.

'Slap in the face'

In a television interview, Milei said the scandal was a "slap in the face", and he described himself as a "techno-optimist" who was just trying to "help fund Argentine projects". Lashing out at political opponents who had criticised him, he said that "every day they confirm how lowly politicians are".

The "most interesting lesson" of the scandal, said Milei, is that "I need to put up more filters", adding that "it can't be so easy for people to reach me". So the president who is "reported to spend hours a day on X" might be "forced to become a little quieter", said The Spectator.

His opponents "appear unlikely" to secure the two-thirds majority needed in congress to impeach him, because centrist blocs said they won't support the proposal, but analysts said investigations into the president could "nonetheless weigh on his approval ratings", said the FT.

In the "medium to long term" this episode will "stain the president's credibility", Marcelo García, from the consultancy Horizon Engage, told the newspaper, particularly because he "brags about his abilities as an economist".

It is perhaps no surprise that the most well-off Americans have benefited tremendously from the AI-driven stock market expansion over the last year, continuing the trend of the planet's wealthiest individuals capturing a greater share of riches. But the degree to which President Donald Trump has personally enriched himself during his second term in office is shocking. By aggressively wielding the regulatory and national security powers of the U.S. government and leveraging his family's name and business reputation, Trump and his family have added billions to their bottom line since January 2025, often through quid pro quo arrangements conducted in broad daylight.

Many of Trump's most lucrative deals have involved the AI and crypto industries, both of which he substantially deregulated since taking office, despite concerns about conflicts of interest and the creation of speculative bubbles that could harm ordinary investors. The president remains completely unapologetic about using his office in this fashion and boosting his family's overseas business dealings with American policy and power. "I found out that nobody cared, and I'm allowed to," said President Trump in a January 8, 2026 interview with The New York Times. "I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it." This self-dealing, reminiscent of how developing world dictators like Nigeria's Sani Abacha use their positions in government, has yet to generate a substantial public backlash — especially given the current focus on the administration's other controversies, like mass deportations and the cost of living crisis.

In May 2025, the Trump administration lifted a national security restriction on the sale of advanced AI chips to the UAE, months after the UAE and Qatar invested more than $1.5 billion in an investment fund operated by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. These deals "blurred the lines between personal and government business and raised questions about whether U.S. interests were served," said The New York Times. In January 2026, Saudi developer Dar Al Arkan announced that it would "launch two Trump-branded luxury projects in Riyadh and Jeddah with a combined value of $10 billion," said Reuters. The announcement followed Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's November 2025 visit to the White House, during which President Trump announced the U.S. would sell advanced F-35 fighters to the Kingdom, as well as promising to lift restrictions on AI chip sales. Another representative example was Trump's October 2025 pardon of former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was convicted of money laundering in 2023. Binance was the recipient of a $2 billion investment by Emirati investment firm MGX, which was conveniently conducted in the brand-new USD1 stablecoin, operated by World Liberty Financial, in which the Trump family has a controlling interest. It was the largest crypto transaction in history. In December 2025, "Binance began paying users of its platform to hold USD1: Binance announced that, for the next month, it would give users a bonus equal to about 1.7% on up to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of USD1 holdings," said The New Yorker. The total volume of USD1 in circulation has subsequently more than doubled, to "roughly five billion, and most of that expansion appears to have taken place on the Binance platform." World Liberty also began selling "digital governance tokens," which have no fixed value and "do not entitle a buyer to any equity in World Liberty; nor to any share of its profits, raising many questions about why an investor might want to own them — other than for World Liberty's connection to the Trumps," said The New Yorker.

Also in December 2025, the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the microblogging site Truth Social, announced that it had merged with a speculative nuclear fusion company, TAE Technologies. Nuclear fusion is a technology that, even in best case scenarios, is many years away from commercial viability. That day, Trump "saw the value of his stake jump by about $400 million to about $1.6 billion with the 35% rally in the stock by midday," said Politico. When that deal was signed, the president had "recently signed an executive order to launch" the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, "which seeks to accelerate fusion development with help from AI, advanced computing and the department's sprawling national labs." Overall, The New Yorker estimated in February 2026 that Trump and his family have made $4.05 billion just since his second inauguration on ventures that fundamentally depend on his role as the U.S. president.

Trump's net worth, according to Forbes, had soared $7.3 billion as of February 18, 2026, after falling as low as $2.3 billion prior to his reelection in 2024. Despite this flurry of wealth-building activity, Trump still falls short of inclusion on Bloomberg's list of the 500 richest people in the world. And figuring out the trajectory of the president's wealth is a significant challenge made all the more difficult by his refusal to release his tax returns or share the kinds of financial disclosures that were once routine in American politics.

How did Trump originally amass his fortune?

In Trump's telling, he is a self-made man who built his fortune with a small loan from his father. But in "every era of Mr. Trump's life, his finances were deeply intertwined with, and dependent on, his father's wealth," said The New York Times; the outlet claims that his parents ultimately transferred nearly $1 billion to their children while paying almost nothing in taxes. "Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children," and much of his maneuvering was "structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal."

Trump's father, Fred, was a real estate tycoon who operated mostly in and around New York City, and Donald Trump "served his own apprenticeship in the less glamorous family business of renting apartments," said the Los Angeles Times. One of his earliest duties was "booting poor, nonpaying tenants" out of a Cincinnati apartment complex purchased by his father. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1968, Trump returned to New York City and took on a larger role in the family business. He "took control of the company — which he renamed the Trump Organization — in 1971," said BBC. His "first big move" was "to negotiate an unusual arrangement with the government of New York City," including a 40-year tax abatement, in order to purchase the Commodore Hotel in New York City, said the Miller Center. The hotel was relaunched in 1980 and rebranded as the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

As his portfolio expanded, "the one that made him" was Trump Tower, said Curbed. In 1979, he bought the department store Bonwit Teller for $10 million and demolished it to make way for the mixed-use high-rise that would eventually bear his name. When it opened on October 1, 1983, Trump Tower "offered an unprecedented mix of high-end retail space and luxury condominiums," said The Hollywood Reporter. "Celebrity was a big ingredient" in its success, added Curbed, and Trump sold residential units to Hollywood stars including Steven Spielberg and Fay Wray. With his real estate empire expanding, Trump also embarked on a media blitz that "helped the real estate developer transition from a figure of note in New York City to a national celebrity and household name," said The Atlantic. In 1987, he published a ghostwritten book, "The Art of the Deal," that was a "phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the Times best-seller list," said The New Yorker. By 1990, his holdings included not just Manhattan high-rises and other real estate developments but also casinos, golf courses and the Eastern Airlines shuttle service he had purchased in 1989 and renamed Trump Shuttle.

Overcoming bankruptcy with a little help from family and reality TV

The Trump Organization fell on hard times in the 1990s. Hit hard by the 1990-1991 recession, "the amount of cash that Mr. Trump had available to him had fallen below $1.7 million and was expected to fall below $800,000 within months" in 1991, said The New York Times. The basic problem was that "Trump's empire could not keep pace with the enormous debt payments he owed," said NPR. Trump was forced to sell his airline to USAir in 1991. Those struggles pushed him into the "transaction that would eventually free him from his financial travails": taking his "struggling casinos public, selling stock to raise money and shifting his personal debt into the new company" in 1995.

In 1997, Fred Trump transferred his real estate holdings to his four children, which they sold off in 2004. Donald Trump received $177.3 million. Yet he filed an "individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year" in 2004, said The New York Times. It was also in 2004 that Trump began hosting NBC's reality show "The Apprentice," in which a group of contestants competes to win a contract from the Trump Organization. The show, which Trump hosted from 2004 to 2015, helped him make "some $197 million" over 16 years. In addition, "$230 million flowed from the fame" associated with the show.

Not everything that Trump touched during this time period turned to gold, however. Between 2005 and 2010, Trump operated Trump University, which ultimately had to pay out a $25 million settlement to "more than 6,000 Trump U students who paid thousands of dollars for courses they describe as worthless," said NPR. In 2006, he launched a self-branded vodka business that "stopped production in 2011, reportedly due to a lack of interest," said Time. Trump also operated an unsuccessful steak business, a failed travel search engine and a short-lived mortgage company between 2006 and 2012.

Assuming the presidency and pursuing social media

When Trump launched his bid for president in 2015, Forbes estimated his net worth at $4.5 billion. During his first term, he largely refrained from new ventures, while his "assortment of businesses brought in some $2.4 billion in revenue and some $550 million in income from 2017 to 2020," said Forbes. After leaving office in 2021, he founded the Trump Media and Technology group, which included his new far-right social media website, Truth Social. But legal troubles, including an $83.3 million judgment in a civil trial stemming from sexual assault allegations against him by journalist E. Jean Carroll and a $454 million fraud liability in New York, took their toll. By early 2024, his "political prospects were shaky, his financial future nightmarish," said Forbes.

However, over the following year, Trump "more than doubled his estimated fortune, from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion, in large part by taking Truth Social public, delaying payment on his judgments and plunging himself into a third quest for the presidency. It was a bid he would ultimately win, setting the stage for an even more aggressive and norm-shattering plan to capitalize financially on his position as the country's chief executive.

New tariff regime sends markets into turmoil

If anything, the first eleven months of President Trump's second term have rendered it even harder to make a confident appraisal of his net worth. The "opaque ownership structure of the Trump businesses makes it difficult to assess changes in his net worth," said The New Yorker, and it is "hard to isolate his presidential profits, in part because estimating how much his businesses might have made if he weren't president would require detailed comparisons with similar enterprises that have non-presidential owners." Another significant contributor to that uncertainty was his decision to implement sweeping tariffs on nearly every country in the world on April 2, 2025, which he pledged to do during his campaign and for weeks preceding the announcement. He dubbed it "Liberation Day" and argued that the new tariffs "will free the U.S. from a reliance on foreign goods," said The Associated Press.

But the most immediate reaction was widespread fear that the levies "could push the U.S. economy into recession if they aren't quickly pulled back," said CNN. As many analysts expected, that maneuver sent stocks tumbling immediately and introduced almost unprecedented uncertainty into financial markets.

Reeling from that financial turmoil, President Trump announced a "pause" on April 9, 2025, saying that while his administration worked out individual trade deals with dozens of countries, he would impose a "universal tariff rate for the next 90 days" that would be "10% for virtually all countries, with the exception of China," said CBS News. That stabilized markets until the expiration date of the original "pause" approached in July, when he announced significant new tariffs on 14 countries that lacked new trade agreements, including South Korea and Japan, triggering another round of market mayhem.

Markets not only recovered, however, but thrived, driven by an ongoing AI investment boom that has many analysts worried about a massive bubble. By mid-February 2026, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 6,000 points since his second inauguration. Those gains added hundreds of millions of dollars to the president's net worth, together with ongoing and aggressive maneuvers to boost the value of his various holdings. When Trump Media merged with the nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies, it sent shares of the former soaring and added another $500 million to his net worth. While his wealth is currently parked in an irrevocable trust managed by his son Donald Trump, Jr., President Trump "remains the sole donor and beneficiary, and is still able to earn income from his businesses," said Forbes. And the most important of those businesses, in terms of the spectacular growth of his net worth, are his crypto ventures.

Trump's crypto schemes boost his fortune

On January 17, 2025, days before being sworn in for his second term as president, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency, a meme coin, "sparking a feverish buying that apparently sent its market capitalization soaring to several billion dollars," said CBS News. His wife, Melania Trump, also launched a currency the same day. The decision to launch Trump-branded cryptocurrency on the eve of his presidency created a "mind-boggling number of potential conflicts of interest" and "aligns with the interests of rich crypto bros who want to seize the reins of government to make themselves even richer," said Rolling Stone. In addition, "President Donald Trump’s family took control of the crypto venture" World Liberty Financial in January 2025 and "grabbed the lion’s share" of funds the enterprise had raised," said The Associated Press. "It's as if a new bank had opened under the sitting President's name, and it was being sent large quantities of funds by various foreign businesses and political elites," said The New Yorker.

Very quickly, crypto came to constitute a substantial portion of Trump's financial portfolio. "A majority of his fortune, an estimated $3.3 billion of his total $5.5 billion, lies in the buzzy" crypto industry, said Forbes in an updated net worth appraisal in June 2025. That may help explain his administration's crypto-friendly policies, including appointing a "pro-crypto businessperson, Paul Atkins, to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission," and the creation of a federal Bitcoin reserve and the Emirati investment deal conducted in Trump's stablecoin. The Trump administration's determination to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the world" has unleashed a wave of companies seeking to offer new products in the crypto marketplace. Many of them "have some connection to the Trump family's growing lineup of crypto companies, which have blurred the line between commerce and government," said The New York Times. Taken together, these developments suggest that even one of the world's richest men can, in fact, be bought — it just costs a lot.

What happened

President Donald Trump Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of dark-web drug marketplace Silk Road, 10 years into his life sentence for conspiracy to traffic narcotics, money laundering and other crimes. Trump also defended his decision to pardon or free more than 1,500 participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault, claiming they had been "treated unbelievably poorly" and "served years in jail" they "should not have served."

Who said what

Trump said on social media he had pardoned Ulbricht "in honor" of the Silk Road founder's mother and "the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly." He called the life sentence "ridiculous" and the New York federal prosecutors who secured a jury conviction "scum." Prosecutors said Silk Road facilitated more than 1.5 million sales of heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances, contributing to the deaths of at least six people. A federal judge in Manhattan called Ulbricht "the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise" at his 2015 sentencing.

But Ulbricht is a "cult hero in the cryptocurrency and libertarian worlds," The New York Times said. "Crypto enthusiasts" appreciated that he created "one of the first venues where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell goods," and libertarians generally oppose drug laws. Trump had promised to commute Ulbricht's sentence at the Libertarian Party national convention last May.

Congressional Republicans "struggled to defend" Trump's Jan. 6 pardons, especially for the rioters convicted of assaulting police officers, CNN said. Some said they disagreed with the pardons for violent rioters, but "most Republicans wouldn't weigh in on whether Trump had made the right decision."

What next?

Counterterrorism experts said Trump's clemency, especially for the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper leaders serving long sentences for seditious conspiracy, "could further embolden fringe groups" and boost political violence by far-right militias, The Washington Post said.

What happened

Bitcoin topped $100,000 for the first time Wednesday, hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Who said what

Wednesday's high-water mark — $103,713 for a single bitcoin — capped an "extraordinary rally since Election Day," when the world's largest cryptocurrency was trading at $69,374, The Wall Street Journal said. A "wave of campaign spending" by crypto firms helped send 298 pro-crypto lawmakers to Congress and Trump to the White House. Trump in turn promised to make the U.S. "the crypto capital of the planet" and create a "strategic reserve" of bitcoin.

The crypto industry wants legislative and regulatory changes that, "generally speaking, aim for an increased sense of legitimacy without too much red tape," The Associated Press said. Atkins, a former SEC commissioner who co-chairs the Chamber of Digital Commerce's Token Alliance, is expected to be much friendlier to the industry than outgoing SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

What next?

Bitcoin, worth about $5,000 in early 2020, "now stands as arguably the most successful investment product of the last 20 years," The New York Times said. It also "remains prone to extreme volatility," significantly "contributes to climate change" has "long been used by scammers and thieves." But "who can prohibit it?" Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Wednesday, according to Reuters. "No one."

Donald Trump's relationship with the tech industry has oscillated over the years, and now that he is on his way to a second term, Big Tech is bracing itself for what that could mean for their businesses over the next four years.

After he became president for the first time, the tech industry "mobilized quickly to resist some of his anti-liberal policies," Bloomberg said. But this time around, "things in the Valley feel different." Eight years after the 2016 election, it is "unclear what appetite for resistance remains." In fact, on the morning after the election, a "procession of tech CEOs" all lined up to "digitally kiss the ring." They posted "unnervingly similar messages" congratulating him and "pledging to work together to boost American innovation." The cautious messaging greatly contrasts the response to his first term, signaling a shift in Silicon Valley.

Elon Musk and crypto could win big

No matter who they voted for, "nearly everyone in tech will feel the consequences of a second Trump term," said Kevin Roose at The New York Times. His first term was "wild and unpredictable," creating a chaotic environment that "even the biggest tech companies struggled to navigate." It is likely that "more chaos and uncertainty lie ahead." Of all the leaders in Big Tech, no one stands to benefit more from Trump's win than Elon Musk, "who will become the most powerful businessman in America (if he wasn't already)." Trump has suggested he might make him the head of a new department of government efficiency that would cut the federal workforce, putting Musk in the "enviable position of getting to pick who regulates his companies," including Tesla and SpaceX. It is also safe to assume that the "crypto industry will get most of what it wants in Washington," said Roose, beginning with the ouster of Gary Gensler, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has become a "villain among crypto companies for his tough regulation efforts."

Though he previously rejected Bitcoin as a "scam," Trump seemed to embrace crypto on the 2024 campaign trail. While speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference, he promised to "cement the U.S. as the foremost Bitcoin mining powerhouse, establish a national Bitcoin stockpile, and appoint a Bitcoin advisory council if reelected," said Wired. The cryptocurrency's prices soared to a record high above $82,000 on Monday as traders anticipate a "favorable regulatory environment" under Trump, said Reuters.

Trump has also promised to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, creator of darknet marketplace Silk Road, who is currently serving life in prison. The severity of Ulbricht's sentence is "widely considered to be disproportionate by Bitcoiners, who have long called for his release."

Meta, Google, and AI regulation might take a hit

Trump may have publicly cozied up to Musk, but other tech leaders are "in his crosshairs," said Business Insider. While campaigning, Trump "threatened retribution against some tech companies, including jailing Meta's chief, Mark Zuckerberg." In an August post on Truth Social, he threatened to imprison "election fraudsters" if he was elected in November, name-checking the Meta CEO. Still, it is "unclear whether Trump will follow through on his threats." Google was also heavily criticized by Trump throughout his campaign. In another Truth Social post, he accused the platform of being biased in favor of his opponent. He threatened to use the Justice Department to prosecute Google "at the maximum levels" during his second term.

The effects of a second Trump administration "will be acutely felt in the AI industry," which has "largely rallied against federal policymaking," Kyle Wiggers said at TechCrunch. While campaigning, Trump repeatedly said he plans to dismantle Biden's artificial intelligence policy framework and has "aligned himself with kingmakers who've sharply criticized all but the lightest-touch regulations." Trump also promised policies that would "support AI development rooted in free speech and human flourishing," though he did not detail what that would look like.

On top of deregulation, "Trump's trade policies could significantly affect AI development," Benj Edwards said at Ars Technica. His proposed 10 percent tariff on U.S. imports and a 60 percent tariff on Chinese products might "impact the AI industry's access to necessary technology and capital," potentially "interrupting the supply of GPUs that are necessary to accelerate AI training and inference tasks." Trump "rarely discussed AI during his campaign," but his "other platform positions could influence the industry." His plans to restrict H-1B visas and expand oil and gas development may "affect AI companies' ability to recruit talent and access computing resources."

What's at stake as Trudeau takes on Modi? How would assisted dying change Britain? And are we running out of water? Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

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"We start new companies like Google; we start new communities like Facebook; we start new currencies like bitcoin and ethereum; can we start new countries?"

These were the words of Balaji Srinivasan in 2023, a "rockstar in the world of crypto" who was outlining a vision of "the not-too-distant future", said the BBC. The "serial tech entrepreneur" and Silicon Valley venture capitalist calls his idea – effectively start-up nations – the "network state":

Cyber statelets

There is "nothing new about corporations having undue influence in the affairs of nation states". Beginning in the 1930s, a US company, United Fruit, "effectively ruled Guatemala for decades".

But the network state movement "doesn't just want pliant existing governments so that companies can run their own affairs". It wants to "replace governments with companies". Here's how it works: "communities form – on the internet initially – around a set of shared interests or values. Then they acquire land, becoming physical 'countries' with their own laws."

The entities would "exist alongside existing nation states", eventually replacing them. This would allow people to choose their nationality, "like you choose your broadband provider", and "become a citizen of the franchised cyber statelet of your choice".

These new states "are not merely theoretical constructs", said Forbes. "They represent a practical reimagining of how communities can organise and govern themselves in the digital age." And in today's "chaotic world" of "geopolitical clashes" and an increasing digital economy, this "sounds more realistic than ever before".

The idea is being powered by a "cultish tech movement that ultimately seeks to end countries as we know them", said The New Republic, and "decentralise governance in the same way that crypto seeks to decentralise finance". The ambitious plan would see "typically cash-strapped countries cede land to tech bros who want to play a real-life version of SimCity".

Another major player is the Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, who told the "Moment of Zen" podcast that we can "tokenise real estate and actual physical land to create better forms of society". It's "hard to imagine any other American CEO openly discussing plans to undermine the US government and start their own country", said the news site, but "even more unimaginably", politicians "across the spectrum are openly embracing Armstrong".

Crowdfunding territory

The players behind this movement are slowly gaining more influence. In his 2022 book "The Network State: How to Start a New Country", Srinivasan – commonly known as just Balaji – said a network state would be "a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action" that "crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states".

Srinivasan argued that "these new business-friendly hubs would soon compete with nation-states and, one day, replace them", said The New York Times. He said "The Network State" was inspired by the state of Israel. "What I'm really calling for is something like tech Zionism – when a community forms online and then gathers in physical space to form a 'reverse diaspora'."

His company, Praxis, is looking to build a new city on the Mediterranean, "governed and built by the community", said Forbes. The project has "significant funding" and it has hired a team that includes a former G7 prime minister to support negotiations and city planning.

Last October, Balaji announced "the network school": a three-month retreat for those interested in what he calls "decentralised countries". Details were "shrouded in secrecy", said Wired – even the location wasn't publicly disclosed, although there are indications that it is Forest City, a "duty-free zone" in Malaysia.

A "crucial step" for decentralised countries is "having physical territory": the network school "clears that bar". Balaji said he is working to "build out the real estate" with the goal of "scaling the school".

He also outlined the "values" to which students must conform, including "seeing bitcoin as the successor to the US Federal Reserve, and trusting AI over human courts and judges". "It's for those who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco," said Balaji.

But the network state project "has its detractors", said Wired. Some argue that by acquiring low-cost land and relying on low-wage labour, using such network states to allegedly "hoard personal and corporate wealth", founders "exacerbate colonialism and inequality".

Donald Trump has long been an innovator in the field of branded marketing and merchandise, with product lines that well precede his current status as a once and potentially future president. Everything from beef to boardgames and even bottled water has all borne the vaunted Trump brand — and the implied promise therein of a similarly luxuriant lifestyle to his.

In spite of this lifetime of branded sales pitches, the past few weeks have nevertheless seen a marked uptick in high-end Trump-hawked items, even as the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stretch. Since late September, Trump has cut promotions for silver coins ("The ONLY OFFICIAL coin designed by me"), luxury watches ("these Watches are truly special — You're going to love them") and a cryptocurrency exchange ("We're embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind") — all on the heels, as it were, of this year's earlier "Never Surrender High-Tops" sneaker launch.

That Trump would lend his name and brand to a suite of merchandise is not, in and of itself, particularly shocking. But with time quickly running out until Election Day next month, the Republican nominee's focus on unrelated commercial products seems a notable, if somewhat confounding, distraction from his campaign for the White House. At the same time, by hawking self-branded products during a presidential race, Trump has once again muddied the legal and ethical waters when it comes to fundraising and electioneering.

What did the commentators say?

Many of the recent Trump-branded products are sold on websites that note "proceeds from their sales do not directly benefit Trump or his campaign," NY1 said. However, the products are "subject to a 'paid license agreement,'" which is the "same mechanism that allowed Trump, well before he entered politics, to profit for years from sales of everything from water, vodka and steaks." While it's "unclear where the watches are being manufactured or the maker," the TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC company licensed to use Trump's name on the product line "lists its address as a suite located in a building in Sheridan, Wyoming, the same address as the company selling Trump's $499 sneakers," CBS News said. "The suite is near a Wendy's fast-food location and Sherwin-Williams paint store."

Trump is hardly the first president to earn a post-presidential living, however, no other "modern one-term president has seriously sought to reclaim his old job," Business Insider said. According to his recent financial disclosure forms, Trump's various product sales "amount to big business" from which he's made "more than $12 million alone just by selling NFTs and books."

"There's no precedent in history at all, and certainly not in modern history, for somebody who has monetized the office or running for office of president the way he has," former Office of Government Ethics general counsel Don Fox said to The Washington Post. His campaign "feels like it only exists to support his true passion: bringing back the late-night TV infomercial," said New York magazine. In regards to Trump's newly launched cryptocurrency exchange, "taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling," said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington spokesperson Jordan Libowitz to the Associated Press. "The troubling aspect is doing it while starting a way to personally benefit from it" — particularly if he wins in November. After initially panning cryptocurrency, Trump is now leading his campaign's "effort to build what it calls a 'crypto army' leading up to Election Day," the AP said.

Trump's branded sales are part of an "extraordinary effort to mix his personal finances with his bid to return to political power," The New York Times said. In particular, he does much of his campaigning on Truth Social, a "social platform owned by the Trump Media & Technology Group" where "since he announced his new election effort" he has hawked a host of products "all branded with his name, image or campaign themes."

What next?

With Kamala Harris showing signs of taking the lead in recent polls, the Trump camp "appears to be scrambling to make hay while the sun still shines," Vanity Fair said. While Trump largely is "interested in licensing deals and one-off deals where he does not have to make large time commitments," his focus on personal branding and sales "also further a narrative that Democrats say resonates with voters: that the former president only cares about himself," The Washington Post said. Win or lose, it's unlikely that dynamic is set to change anytime soon.

The FBI has warned about a potentially devastating cryptocurrency scam called "pig butchering".

The con, which CBS News said could "wipe out someone's life savings", has been growing in scale over the last five years and, as China has cracked down on the operation, it has spread around the globe.

'Fattening up'

The operation is given its eye-catching name because it involves "fattening up" victims before taking everything they have. The operators assume false online identities and spend months "financially grooming" their victims to win their trust and get them to invest on "fraudulent cryptocurrency websites", said CNN.

The process involves "building seemingly intimate relationships with victims", explained Wired, and the "attacks often start by texting potential targets out of the blue and getting them talking".

The attackers "begin to build a rapport and introduce the idea of a special or unique investment opportunity" and victims send funds – typically cryptocurrency – through a "malicious platform meant to look like a legitimate money management service", before the money is laundered from there.

Deepening the criminality involved, a CNN investigation last year found that many of the scammers are themselves victims of human trafficking.

The FBI estimates that pig butchering scams stole nearly $4bn in total from tens of thousands of American victims last year, a 53% increase from the year before. It's "theft at a scale so large", said CNN, that investigators are calling it a "mass transfer of wealth from middle-class Americans to criminal gangs".

Nigeria to the Isle of Man

Beijing has "made a concerted effort" in recent months to "crack down on pig butchering schemes", said Wired, but the activity is now "proliferating around the world".

Since 2021, Dubai has emerged as "the largest epicentre of pig butchering outside Southeast Asia" and it's also prominent in "multiple African countries" because of "an existing culture of organised scamming".

In Nigeria, for instance, "readily available" prefab cryptocurrency investment platforms, templates and scripts are "available for sale online to anyone who wants to get started". The fraud has reached eastern Europe with at least two centres  uncovered by law enforcement in Georgia, and scam compounds "have also been broken up" in Peru and Sri Lanka.

Closer to home, a "seaside hotel and former bank offices on the Isle of Man" have been used by scammers conning victims in China out of millions of dollars, a BBC World Service investigation found earlier this year.

Serious money

Mina Chiang, the founder and director of Humanity Research Consultancy, told Wired that fraud is "not being seen as a serious crime – not like drugs, not like terrorism" and "we need to start shifting that idea, because it creates the same kind of damage", and "maybe even more because the amount of money we're talking about is so huge".

As criminals "learn that they can make serious money" pig butchering, they’re going to make those pivots", Ronnie Tokazowski, a researcher on the issue told the outlet, so pig butchering "is cropping up in more and more countries" and "even with all the interventions" from the authorities, there is "little to no sign of this stopping".

An important new question for presidential candidates: Where do you stand on cryptocurrencies? Donald Trump has already made friendly gestures to the crypto sector. Now Kamala Harris appears to be joining in.

In an "overture to young men," Axios said, Harris has signaled her "friendliness to cryptocurrency." The signal came at a recent Wall Street fundraiser. "We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets, while protecting investors and consumers," she told attendees. Why now? Election-year outreach. Younger men are "more likely than any other voter group to own cryptocurrencies," said Axios, and they're also trending toward Donald Trump and the GOP at a rate that is "alarming" to Democrats.

"Welcome to the crypto election," Claire Williams said at American Banker. The industry has become one of the "most visible and vocal" business sectors trying to influence the 2024 presidential and congressional elections — with a campaign "war chest" that already exceeds the banking industry's contributions. That's an "enormous" amount of power for a "fledgling industry," said Williams. The aim? To see more "industry-friendly regulators and legislation come 2025."

Looking for a 'breakout year'

Cryptocurrency was "once on the fringe of finance" but now stands ready for a "breakout year" after the November election, Laurent Belsie said at The Christian Science Monitor. But the industry has also attracted the attention of regulators — including Democrats and Republicans in Congress — who see both "potential and pitfalls" in digital currencies. Trump has indicated his own warmth to crypto, backing his sons' World Liberty Financial project and speaking at the Bitcoin conference. But some in the industry have kept an eye on Harris."You don't win statewide elections on several occasions in California without being tech-forward," said a speaker at last month's Crypto4Harris fundraiser.

The election could "define the future of crypto," said the BBC. The Biden administration has led a "sweeping crackdown" on crypto firms — prosecuting FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for fraud and Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao for allowing criminals to launder money on his platform. Those prosecutions might be why the number of Americans using cryptocurrencies dropped to 7% last year. A tight presidential race, though, could give the industry some leverage with both candidates. "Every vote is going to count," said one executive, and "crypto votes are no exception."

A 'dialogue' between campaign, crypto industry

Money may be a bigger factor than votes. The industry has already spent $119 million on this year's elections, "magnitudes more" than in previous cycles, Whizy Kim said at Vox. Crypto can muster that financial power even though the product itself has "struggled to gain any real traction with the public." Digital currencies have been around since 2009, but crypto "still hasn't penetrated" as a mainstream payment method. Instead, it is mostly used as a "vehicle for speculative investment." That might be why companies "redoubled their efforts to help elect pro-crypto politicians."

Harris' fundraiser comments were "deliberately broad," Jesse Hamilton said at CoinDesk. But she is unlikely to offer a "deep dive" into potential crypto policies before the November election. Her campaign has kept "dialogue running with a narrow group of industry executives and insiders." That's "progress" one executive told Hamilton. "All we want are sensible rules," said Coinbase's Paul Grewal, "and we'll follow them."

From bitcoin and ethereum to tether and dogecoin, there are a wide variety of cryptocurrencies to choose from. For many who have opted in, crypto has yielded impressive returns. However, for others, it has led to devastating losses, not to mention encounters with scams and fraud in the industry.

So is this buzzy digital currency worth adding to your investment portfolio, or is it better to steer clear? We lay out the pros and the cons to help you decide.

What exactly is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency "is a digital currency, such as bitcoin, that is used as an alternative payment method or speculative investment," meaning an investor hopes to profit from a change in value when they go to sell, said NerdWallet.

Typically, "cryptocurrencies exist on decentralized networks using blockchain technology — a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers" — and "are generally not issued by any central authority," said Investopedia.

What are the upsides of investing in crypto?

Depending on the type of investor you are and your tolerance for risk, crypto can offer upsides as an investment, including:

It is a decentralized currency. For many, a major upside of crypto is that it is a "decentralized currency, meaning it's not regulated by a single government or central bank," said Credit Karma. In other words, "governments can't control [crypto] like they can with centralized fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar."

It offers diversification. One potential benefit of crypto for your portfolio is that owning some "can increase your portfolio's diversification since cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have historically shown few price correlations with the U.S. stock market," said The Motley Fool. Diversification is key when investing, as it spreads your portfolio across a number of different types of assets, buffering against market volatility.

It may provide sizable returns. Though it is far from guaranteed this will happen, "several cryptocurrencies have seen their prices skyrocket since first being introduced," said Bankrate. This translates to "the potential for large gains on your investment." Plus, since "the sector is quite new," there are "potentially many more changes that may come down the line to make investing in cryptocurrencies even more attractive," said Corporate Finance Institute, a financial education website.

It is accessible. Another benefit of crypto is that it "can be easily accessible to everyone around the clock, even those without access to traditional banking," whether due to a checkered banking history, lack of documentation or lack of proximity to bank branches, said Fidelity. Further, "crypto transactions can have lower fees and faster transfer times than some traditional bank transactions." One caveat: If you lose your password to your digital wallet, there is no recovery process like for other financial products and accounts. Instead, "if you lose your password, you lose access to your bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies stored in it)," said AARP.

Are there risks or drawbacks to crypto?

While past tales of people making bank on crypto may seem tempting, it is important to heavily weigh the downsides of this investment as well:

It is extremely volatile. While risk of loss is possible with any type of investment," crypto's elevated volatility makes it an even bigger risk factor," said Forbes. As just one example, "Bitcoin has experienced rapid surges and crashes in its value, climbing to nearly $65,000 in November 2021 before dropping to just over $20,000 a year and a half later," said Investopedia. Further, said Bankrate, since cryptocurrencies "aren't backed by anything," that means "the price they trade at is determined by the whims of traders."

It is susceptible to hacks and scams. Fraud and hacks are both common with crypto. That is because "though cryptocurrency blockchains are highly secure, off-chain crypto-related key storage repositories, such as exchanges and wallets, can be hacked," said Investopedia. In the past, many exchanges and wallets have been hacked, "sometimes resulting in the theft of millions of dollars in coins." Further, there are "websites that look like opportunities for investing in or mining cryptocurrencies, but are bogus," which can deceive less experienced investors, said Charles Schwab.

It lacks government regulation. While some may see it as an upside that crypto is largely unregulated, that can bring downsides as well. "Governments around the world have not yet fully reckoned with how to handle cryptocurrency, so regulatory changes and crackdowns have the potential to affect the market in unpredictable ways," said NerdWallet. Leaving crypto unregulated also puts "investors at risk of market manipulation and fraud," said The Wall Street Journal.

It has a major environmental impact. Crypto is often made through mining, which "involves solving complex mathematical problems to verify transactions and create new blocks in the blockchain," said Credit Karma. This "requires lots of computational power, which in turn requires a large amount of energy." In fact, according to "a comparison by the University of Cambridge," said NerdWallet, "worldwide bitcoin mining consumes more than twice as much power as all U.S. residential lighting." That said, not all types of crypto have the same level of carbon intensity, and "many crypto mining companies are using renewable sources of power and have committed to carbon offsetting," said Morgan Stanley.

'Don't get fooled again by crypto'

Eswar Prasad at The New York Times

Cryptocurrency is "on the verge of mainstream acceptance" among politicians, but this "probably has more to do with a cynical bid for young voter support and Silicon Valley cash than a maturing of a financially perilous set of assets," says Eswar Prasad. Crypto today "presents even greater risks to its investors and to our financial institutions than it did before," and the "fact that the Republican Party is publicly celebrating crypto to American voters could only make matters worse."

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'A string of exits might help guide more CEOs to the door'

Garrett M. Graff at The Washington Post

There is "no question harder for a leader than knowing when to say goodbye," says Garrett M. Graff. Luck "can often play a bigger role in who leaves when than the leaders' choices themselves — and, unfortunately, luck is often visible only in hindsight." But this is a "reminder to anyone in a leadership role that it is important to start thinking about your end goals — and what you aim to do after you accomplish them." 

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'What would a Trump II Taiwan policy look like?'

John Rodden at The American Conservative 

While "Trump's critics have been proclaiming that he is set to abandon Taiwan and turn the island over to the Chinese Communist Party, other explanations are equally or more plausible," says John Rodden. Trump has "always taken what is described as a 'transactional' approach to foreign policy. He is "not 'abandoning' Taiwan, but rather recalibrating the relationship," which is "at odds with the convictions of the China hawks who had counseled him during his first administration."

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'What burger flipping tells you about the US economy'

Soumaya Keynes at the Financial Times

Some economists "emphasize the role of people switching to better jobs as a mechanism for boosting pay. But what happened to pay for the same work?" says Soumaya Keynes. It is "tough to be sure that the numbers are really describing pay for the same work, and not simply differences in tasks or even skills." If "Washingtonians earn higher McWages than Mississippians, it is probably because of where they live, not because they are particularly proficient at squirting sauce."

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"If bitcoin is going to the Moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way."

Channelling his inner JFK, Donald Trump marked his full conversion to the cult of cryptocurrency by vowing to turn the US into a "bitcoin superpower" if he is returned to the White House in November.

Using what The New York Times called the same "rhetoric of persecution" that he has applied to himself and his supporters to appeal to cryptocurrency enthusiasts who want to see less regulation, the Republican presidential nominee told a sell-out conference in Nashville that he would end Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's "anti-crypto crusade".

The speech capped a "complete about-face" by the former president towards "an asset class he considered a crime-riddled scam while he was in office", said Bloomberg. It also marked what is "more and more looking like the merger of a once-outsider political machine with an outsider financial movement that is also punching its way into the mainstream".

Why has he changed his view?

"Conventional wisdom has it that this gambit is simply a classic Trumpian transactional relationship," said Bloomberg.

With November's presidential election likely to go down to the wire, both sides are looking to pick up money and votes wherever they can. But with the Democrats still sceptical of the famously unregulated crypto market, Trump and his team have sensed a wedge issue they can exploit. 

His dramatic U-turn from bitcoin sceptic to one of its most vocal cheerleaders has already won him the backing of influential figures such as Tesla and X owner Elon Musk as well as a growing army of online fans.

Yet something else has also played an important role in Trump's conversion to crypto believer, said Bloomberg: "flattering images of himself". "Simply put, he fell in love with Trump-themed nonfungible-tokens (NFTs) – and the supporters who bought them – and that passion has turned into a broader appreciation for the industry."

What has he promised to do?

Despite previous warnings that bitcoin could undermine the position of the US dollar in the global economy, Trump has now promised a series of measures to deregulate and grow the cryptocurrency market.

He vowed to end efforts by the US government to create a central bank digital currency, an initiative that cryptocurrency enthusiasts have "long been critical of", said the NYT, vowing instead to establish a "bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council". He said he will order the government to not sell the crypto it has seized in criminal cases and instead use it as the basis for what he called a strategic national bitcoin reserve.

He also announced that on his first day in office he would fire US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler, who has cracked down on the crypto market after the FTX exchange collapsed in 2022 and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was convicted of fraud. Trump also promised to commute the life sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the dark web Silk Road marketplace, who has become "something of a martyr" among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, said the NYT.

What impact could this have on the election?

Trump has sought to convey his new-found support for crypto to both working-class voters and in the context of super-power politics, said Quartz. He described bitcoin as "the steel industry of 100 years ago" and warned that if it was not mined, minted and made in the US then it could leave the door open for the likes of China to lead the way.

But while it may seem a canny realignment, there is "political risk" for Trump to be so closely associated with such a notorious asset class, said Bloomberg, "should another FTX-like situation arise – or even a simple downturn in prices that sours sentiment".

There is also a risk for the crypto industry itself to be so ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, said Hilary Allen, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law. "That may prove to alienate some users, given that crypto itself is a pretty ideological thing to invest in," she added. Trump's involvement "may increase appeal among Republican users, but it may alienate Democrat users".

Paraguay is no stranger to "drug busts and bank heists" but in recent years the South American country has become a "mecca" for a very different type of crime: illegal Bitcoin mining.

Power worth around $60m a year, "enough to light up a city", is being stolen by unlicensed cryptocurrency miners, said The Economist, and there is heated debate over how to tackle the issue.

Rotting food

Besides "soybeans, timber and a massive cow population", Paraguay has "very cheap electricity", said El País, and this is why "more and more Bitcoin generators" are heading here.

Paraguay's massive Itaipú and Yacyretá hydroelectric dams, powered by the "very long and mighty" Paraná and Paraguay rivers, theoretically generate plentiful energy. Looking to capitalise on the excess supply, the government has encouraged cryptocurrency operators to set up in Paraguay in exchange for paying a tariff to ANDE, the state energy firm. Local laws offer mining companies other benefits, including "tax exemptions and a light regulatory framework".

However, the licensed crypto generators who have set up shop in Paraguay have been joined by dozens of cowboy operations that don't pay the tariff, and engage in energy theft that "annoys many Paraguayans", which is now starting to impact the country's energy security. The country’s "creaking transmission lines" are "increasingly overloaded" and Asunción, the capital, suffers from regular power cuts, causing "food to rot and office workers to broil in the sub-tropical heat", said The Economist.

Alarming outlook

The government had declared what it calls an "all-out attack" on crypto cowboys. Earlier this month, the Senate approved jail sentences of up to 10 years for energy thieves.

Authorities recently confiscated 450 Bitcoin mining machines  – bringing the total number seized from illegal operators this year to over 10,000. During a raid in May, police and prosecutors found more than 2,700 computers in a criminal crypto compound that had been operating less than two miles from an ANDE substation. The energy firm is investigating claims that seven of its engineers illegally installed crypto farms, complete with their own power transformers.

The recent raids mean that Paraguay is now "keeping pace" with a regional crackdown which has seen Venezuela take similar steps, said Cryptonews, but the country's future relationship with crypto remains unclear. Advocates claim that, properly regulated, crypto mining could benefit the Paraguayan economy "greatly" but the central bank has warned that it could be used to launder drug money and finance terrorism.

A group of "industrial players" has advised against moves that could "kill off" the sector, claiming that a clampdown could hurt Paraguay's standing in the international business community, cost the nation $1.5 billion and jeopardise "hundreds" of jobs.

Just like the nation's soya bean and cattle industries, hydroelectric output is "vulnerable to climate change". As drought and heatwaves worsen, Itaipú will produce less energy and the cooling systems required by crypto farms will demand more. Official projections suggest Paraguay's electricity surplus will be used up by as early as 2030. "The outlook is alarming," Lis García, co-author of a report by Tedic, a local think-tank, told The Economist.

'The US needs more nukes. Biden finally gets that.'

Hal Brands at Bloomberg

While the Biden administration "once pledged to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. policy, now it acknowledges that those weapons will loom larger in years to come," says Hal Brands. The White House finally "admits that [America's] existing arsenal may not be enough." By the 2030s, the U.S.' nuclear arsenal "will have to be capable of destroying two very diverse, sizable great-power target sets" that will be "vital to the credibility of America's global defense posture."

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'In calling out Trump, Harris finds her mission'

Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post 

When it comes to taking down Trump, the "most pointed, and arguably effective, denunciations have come from Vice President [Kamala] Harris," says Jennifer Rubin. "Perhaps we should have anticipated" that Harris "would lead the onslaught. But the ease with which she twists the knife is still eye-opening." The vice president is "making the persuasive case that voters should not consider [Trump] to be a legitimate candidate," and the White House "needs Harris to challenge Trump and MAGA followers' attacks."

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'Crypto could stave off a US debt crisis' 

Paul D. Ryan at The Wall Street Journal 

To stem the U.S. national debt, we "might start by taking stablecoins seriously," says Paul D. Ryan. If this type of crypto "continues to grow, stablecoins could become one of the largest purchasers of U.S. government debt and a reliable source of new demand," and "their emergence as a mechanism for promoting the dollar couldn't be timelier." The U.S. "may need to find new ways to make the dollar more attractive. Dollar-backed stablecoins are one answer."

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'How AI may become the new offshoring'

John Thornhill at the Financial Times

The "speed of take-up" for artificial intelligence "is stunning," but the "reasons for this acceleration are not hard to fathom," says John Thornhill. Instead of being a "discrete, relatively expensive, physical object," AI is "(mostly) free software that augments existing services." But it will take "five to 10 years to make the most of existing AI models," and "for that reason, we might see the emergence of alternative business models that can accelerate the process."

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What happened

A federal judge in New York on Thursday sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers, money laundering and other crimes tied to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He was also ordered to forfeit $11 billion in assets.

Who said what

Judge Lewis Kaplan said Bankman-Fried deserved a long sentence because he lied at trial, failed to show remorse and there's significant "risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future." Bankman-Fried, 32, said he is "sorry about what happened at every stage" and "my useful life is probably over now."

The commentary

The stiff sentence sets a "crucial" example for aspiring crypto fraudsters, Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Sheila Warren told The Washington Post. "What we don't want to do is incentivize people to say, 'Oh, you just pay a big fine and do whatever you want.' No, you go to jail if you lie, if you steal."

What next?

Kaplan said he will advise that Bankman-Fried be sent to a low- or medium-security prison near San Francisco. The fallen "crypto king" will probably serve 17 to 20 years, The Wall Street Journal said, citing prison consultants. Bankman-Fried is young enough that "he will see the light of day," said Ira Lee Sorkin, a defense lawyer whose client Bernie Madoff died in prison, to The New York Times. "But he is going to spend a lot of time in a cell."

The price of bitcoin this week topped $50,000 for the first since the end of 2021, marking a dramatic return for the world's most popular cryptocurrency. 

The rise was fuelled by "a rush of new-investor enthusiasm" and growing hype about a "cryptic-sounding" event known as "the halving" said CNN Business. Bitcoin's comeback has been "one of the more surprising market stories" of recent months, said Yahoo Finance, and followed an "epic" collapse that "burned many investors and took down some of the industry's biggest names".

'A remarkable comeback'

Since its 2009 launch, bitcoin has amassed an army of "loyal proponents who only see it rising in price over long timeframes", said The Times Money Mentor. These fans include some of the world's most respected trading firms, despite the digital currency's many ups and downs.

Bitcoin currently remains a "way off its all-time high" of almost $69,000, in November 2021 said The Independent. But this week marked a "major milestone" in its recovery from below $20,000 at the start of last year.

Bitcoin's resurgence has has been "remarkable", agreed CNN Business, with the price surging by more than 200% from a 2022 low of $16,000.

The latest rise has been driven by an influx of demand and by new money from investors in newly launched bitcoin exchange-traded funds. In January, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first ever spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for bitcoin, opening up the asset to billions of dollars' worth of institutional investment.        

For Wall Street to finally start trading ETFs of bitcoin represents a "new era in the world of cryptocurrencies" said New York magazine. ETFs are "part of the finance industry's lifeblood". And crypto ETFs make it easier for financial institutions and pension account holders to trade and profit from digital currencies "without having to worry about encryption keys, or getting hacked, or anything like that".

'Not for the faint-hearted'

Some analysts believe the current rally could see the price of bitcoin climbing to a record new high, driven in large part by an upcoming "halving", in April. The event is "hard-coded into bitcoin's underlying network", said The Independent, and takes place roughly every four years, when rewards for mining the cryptocurrency are "slashed in half". This reduces the rate of new coins entering circulation, pushing the price of bitcoin higher.

Previous halvings have preceded record-breaking price rallies, and the next promises to deliver another "scorcher for crypto", said Antoni Trenchev, the co-founder of crypto lender Nexo Capital. “Now that $50,000 has been topped, $69,000 followed by $100,000 look achievable in 2024," he told CNN Business. 

Investment bank Standard Chartered is also predicting that the bitcoin price will reach the $100,000 mark by the end of this year.

Yet experts warn that bitcoin remains hugely volatile. January was "crypto in a nutshell", said Trenchev. Following the endorsement of a spot bitcoin ETF, the cryptocurrency’s price soared to $49,000, but then dipped to $38,500. New investors who endured that "baptism of fire" may now be celebrating this week's gains, but crypto is "not for the faint-hearted".

The legend of Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous bitcoin founder, is a mystery built for the digital age. His true identity has become mythologized, and while no one knows who he is, he's become a symbol of a new era of freedom in finance and technology. The heat is now on an Australian scientist, who has claimed for years to be the enigmatic founder. 

The hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto and the Craig Wright problem

The murky history of bitcoin began in 2008, in the "shadow of a global financial meltdown," when someone under the name Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper outlining the vision for "a new electronic money and peer-to-peer payment system that would obviate the need for troublesome intermediaries like banks," Wired said. The enigmatic creator sent the first bitcoin transaction in 2009, and little more than two years later, they disappeared from the internet. "The hunt for Nakamoto began," said Wired. 

The absence of a leader has helped bitcoin flourish since Nakamoto disappeared, making it "robust" by forcing it to evolve unfettered in an anarchistic system, software developer and early bitcoin adopter Jameson Lopp said to Wired. "Free from the overbearing influence of a founder, anyone that volunteered their time to work on bitcoin could have a say in its direction," Wired said. But one man's claims threaten to complicate that ecosystem. 

Nakamoto's name has been linked to many people, including Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who orchestrated an "elaborate but unconvincing demonstration" that he was the mysterious creator in 2016, Billy Bambrough said at Forbes. Since then, Wright has spent years "dragging naysayers through the courts in a largely unsuccessful attempt to legally be recognized as bitcoin's creator." With the help of former gambling billionaire Calvin Ayre,  Wright has sued bitcoin developers, social media users, podcasters, and anyone else who doubted the credibility of his claims. However, last year, a leaked email hinted that Ayre's faith in Wright was waning.

The high-stakes lawsuit that could finally solve the mystery

Three years ago, a nonprofit coalition of crypto and tech companies called the Crypto Open Patent Alliance brought a lawsuit against Wright, asking the court to officially declare that he is not Nakamoto. Wright has leveraged his "substantial financial backing" against crypto developers based on a lie, "many of whom cannot even afford to present the most basic defense," Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said on behalf of COPA. "This is the exact opposite of the vision that animated Satoshi's white paper in 2008," he said. "It's a drain on the talent and spirit of the crypto economy as a whole, and it needs to stop — now." The case finally went to trial in the U.K. on Feb. 5. 

Unlike other recent crypto-related lawsuits, like Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud trial, "the COPA v. Wright case has attracted little attention," Joel Khalili said in Wired. The case has drawn a small crowd of photographers, journalists, and crypto enthusiasts. "But the case has the potential to be highly consequential." 

A week into the case, the ongoing courtroom tension has "left onlookers astonished," Forbes' Susie Violet Ward said. "Each revelation seems to cast ripples of uncertainty and produce more questions than answers, further muddying the waters." So far, the trial has been a "showcase of detailed technical evidence," Ward said, "punctuated by moments of drama." At one point, Wright exclaimed, "But I AM Satoshi!" The declaration happened when he was cross-examined by Jonathan Hough, who represented COPA. 

In a surprise twist, Wright admitted to the court that some of the documents he presented to prove he was Nakamoto were indeed forgeries, "a revelation that once again sent a wave of disbelief through the courtroom," Ward said. The admission came after COPA's "meticulous" presentation of evidence highlighting "time discrepancies in the documents, such as fonts that were not available when the documents were supposedly created." 

The trial is expected to last about six weeks.

US regulators have approved the country's first investment products set up to directly track the price of Bitcoin.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week approved the launch of 11 exchange traded funds (ETFs), which follow the price of Bitcoin, and are known as spot ETFs.

The SEC has previously opposed these products, explained MoneyWeek, "claiming the asset is open to fraud and manipulation" but it has given the go-ahead after courts queried its opposition.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC, remains cautious though. He said that while listings from investment providers such as BlackRock, Fidelity and Grayscale were approved, "investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with Bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto".

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the world's oldest and best-known cryptocurrency.

It is a digital token that was launched in 2008 by someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, explained BBC News, and "remains the most valuable and famous".

The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is very volatile though, depending on supply, demand and sentiment. The Bitcoin price hit $70,000 or £50,000 in 2021, before falling to $16,000 in 2022 "as scandals shook the industry", but in recent months it has risen "steadily" to around $44,000.

What is a Bitcoin ETF?

An ETF aims to replicate the performance of a broad index such as the FTSE 100 or individual assets such as shares or bonds.

A Bitcoin ETF gives investors a "regulated way to gain exposure without needing to hold it directly", said The Times.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are unregulated, so there is no investor protection if a trading platform collapses or your money is stolen.

A Bitcoin ETF gives you exposure to the cryptocurrency's "huge swings in value", added The Times, but in theory you are still protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if the investment firm behind the ETF were to fail.  

The SEC approval doesn't remove the volatility of Bitcoin though, added MoneyWeek, as the price is "still subject to wild price swings depending on sentiment and there are risks of big losses".

Who can invest in a Bitcoin ETF?

The latest Bitcoin ETFs are only available to US investors. 

There would be "regulatory hurdles" to selling a Bitcoin ETF to UK investors, said Financial News. US-based ETFS are "not permitted" to be sold to UK investors, so asset managers would have to launch "specifically tailored" products for the UK or European market.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has already "cracked down" on crypto marketing and banned the sale of crypto-backed exchange traded products to UK investors, added ThisIsMoney, and has "made it clear" that it thinks there are risks that come with cryptocurrency investing. This makes the path to any UK approval "a long one".

There are other ways for UK crypto fans to get exposure to Bitcoin.

One option is to invest directly in Bitcoin through an FCA-regulated platform, said Morningstar, or "for those feeling somewhat more cautious", you could buy shares of companies involved or exposed to cryptocurrency mining or blockchain.

Existing crypto investors may also benefit from more money going into Bitcoin, added MoneyWeek, "but it also risks making the value more volatile".

Cryptocurrency has been around for over a decade but has become ubiquitous in the past few years. And it seems that the financial platform reached a breaking point in 2023, which appeared to be crypto's year of highs — and lows. 

There are plenty of stories, many of them recent, of people who started with nothing and built themselves into millionaires through crypto investments. For every one of these stories, though, there are also headlines about the other side of crypto, ones that involve fraud, prison and environmental concerns. Here are some of cryptocurrency's ups and downs in 2023. 

Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX

Any mention of "the year of cryptocurrency" would be incomplete without Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried started his company in 2019 and it eventually grew to become one of the industry's largest players. At its peak, FTX was valued at $32 billion. 

The success of the company also made Bankman-Fried extremely wealthy. In September 2022, one month before FTX's collapse, Forbes valued his net worth at $17.2 billion, and he "became a prominent figure in the crypto space while becoming one of the wealthiest people by the age of 30," the outlet noted.  

Behind FTX's success, though, was a much darker story, and the company began to fall apart when the SEC began investigating allegations of a widespread Ponzi scheme with Bankman-Fried at the helm. FTX declared bankruptcy in November 2022. Bankman-Fried was eventually charged with financial securities violations, wire fraud and conspiracy. Throughout 2023, additional information came out showing that FTX had conned its investors out of at least $10 billion. Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven counts in a New York court in November and faces decades in prison, with sentencing scheduled for March 2024. His downfall represents "the deceit fundamental to the crypto market itself," the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Environmental issues

Cryptocurrency has long been the bane of environmentalists who express concern over the waste generated by crypto-mining. While all crypto creates environmental hazards, it was the popular choice Bitcoin that made headlines this year. 

The controversy first emerged in 2021 when the state of Texas ended up paying Bitcoin's parent company $18 million to keep their computers off during a winter storm so that electricity could be redirected to the power grid. While power plants struggled to stay running, these so-called "Bitcoin mines" were being used to power the homes of thousands of people trading crypto. Despite the harm that came from this power outage, the usage of Bitcoin mines remains common throughout the country. In April of this year, an investigation by The New York Times found "identified 34 such large-scale operations ... in the United States, all putting immense pressure on the power grid and most finding novel ways to profit from doing so." 

These mines "can create costs — including higher electricity bills and enormous carbon pollution — for everyone around them," the majority of whom have no stake in Bitcoin. One mine in Dalton, Georgia, is "using nearly as much power as the surrounding 97,000 households," the Times found. The largest Bitcoin mine in the U.S. is located in Rockdale, Texas, and "uses about the same amount of electricity as the nearest 300,000 homes," the Times reported. So it seems that the industry is just getting larger — with taxpayers in Texas and elsewhere stuck with the bill. 

Stocks and lobbying

Despite many negative stories, 2023 wasn't all bad in the crypto world. Many have argued that crypto is still a worthwhile investment, and there is some data to support this despite its volatility. 

Numerous crypto-related stocks rose at the beginning of December as part of a "new surge of momentum fueled by U.S. interest rate cut expectations and traders betting that American regulators will soon approve exchange-traded spot bitcoin funds," Reuters reported. Bitcoin's stock passed $42,000 per share for a short time, representing a 20-month high. The currency has seemingly "[cast] off the gloom that had settled over crypto markets following the collapse of FTX and other crypto-business failures," Reuters added. 

The outlet additionally reported that the crypto industry is "on track to hit a new record for federal lobbying spending." The major crypto companies spent $18.96 million on lobbying in the first three quarters of 2023, according to Reuters, compared with $16.1 million during the same period in 2022. So while cryptocurrency as a whole remains controversial, its financial peaks and valleys remain fluid. 

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web: 

Terrorists, hackers, drug dealers and pedophiles — meet the customers of the world’s largest crypto exchange, said Allyson Versprille and David Voreacos in Bloomberg. Binance "turned a blind eye" to a staggering number of criminal failures, prosecutors said last week in announcing the exchange’s $4.3 billion guilty plea on money-laundering charges. Regulators found chats from Binance’s own compliance chief joking about the exchange "being used to funnel money to Hamas." Bitcoin transactions were commonplace among other terror organizations, including al Qaida and ISIS. Millions of transactions were conducted by people living in Iran, Syria and Cuba, in violation of U.S. sanctions. More than $100 million sat in Binance wallets traced to a Russian darknet marketplace that "sold hacking software, fake IDs and illegal drugs." And more than 1,000 transactions took place involving three marketplaces that dealt in child pornography. As part of the settlement, chief executive Changpeng Zhao agreed to step down and pay a $50 million fine.

Another week, another crypto titan goes down, said James Mackintosh in The Wall Street Journal. Less than a month after FTX leader Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud, Zhao, the richest man in crypto, pleads guilty to money laundering. The twin kill shots by the Justice Department bolster the argument that "the two main use cases" for crypto are "fraud and crime." Now Bitcoin seems primed for an "inevitable collapse in value." Binance still got off too easy, said Thomas P. Vartanian in The Hill. An organization that evades anti-money-laundering laws is enabling crimes. If it were a bank, "its FDIC deposit insurance may have been terminated, its charter revoked and its doors shuttered." Anyone in management with any involvement in such a scheme should be facing jail time and never be permitted to work in the financial industry again. It’s time to stop quibbling over regulatory action. "If they look like a bank, swim like a security and quack like an exchange, they should be regulated like them."

This is not the end for crypto, said Gillian Tett in the Financial Times. But things will probably be different moving forward. Part of crypto’s anti-establishment appeal was that it was "widely viewed as anonymous." That’s clearly not the case anymore — the Binance court documents "describe transactions with Iran," for instance, in vivid detail. A cleaned-up and supervised crypto industry "will make libertarians squeal," but the reform will allow it to be "slowly absorbed into the financial establishment." Binance’s pleading guilty and giving in to "Uncle Sam is a watershed moment," said Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman in The Wall Street Journal. The $4.3 billion penalty is an attention-grabber, but a monitoring agreement as part of the settlement "is arguably even more important." It stipulates that Binance must create "a truly effective anti-money-laundering system." Businesses that want to work with Binance will need to be just as vigilant. The platform will transform "from a scofflaw into a watcher and enforcer on the U.S. government’s behalf." That alone "redefines the relationship between government and crypto."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web: 

Sam Bankman-Fried tried to warn everyone, said David Streitfeld in The New York Times. As he "partied with stars and big shots," the onetime crypto king "always looked awkward, embarrassed and as if he would rather be playing a video game." He frequently conveyed "contempt for what he was doing," appealed for regulation and "seemed to implore the authorities to take a closer look at his companies," FTX and Alameda Research. Still, everyone kept insisting Bankman-Fried, or "SBF," was "off-the-charts brilliant, the entrepreneur who would create the future." Investors, customers and journalists "saw the genius they were told was there." In reality, as we know by now, FTX was "run by a group of hapless young people." Those who actually "sensed something was wrong soon peeled off," leaving a core crew led by Bankman-Fried, who will spend a long time in prison after being convicted last week of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.

Bankman-Fried represents "the deceit fundamental to the crypto market itself," said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. He expertly "exploited the vacuity of crypto by slathering it over with what sounded like profundities." His marks had nothing to weigh them against, because "there is nothing real about crypto." What’s real is that FTX’s investors have lost as much as $10 billion and SBF is facing a prison term as long as 110 years. This won’t be the last crypto fraud, said Lionel Laurent in Bloomberg. In fact, the market already "is stirring again," and the price of Bitcoin, despite all the negative attention, is back above $35,000.

Bankman-Fried is exactly why crypto needs regulation, said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post. It’s an "ecosystem of people who think they’re far smarter than boring bankers or bank regulators." Bankman-Fried was "better at calculating odds" than most people, "but he still miscalculated a lot — including, on the odds that he might go to jail." Instead of pleading out, he "gambled on a trial" — then doubled down by "opening himself up to cross-examination." As soon "as the prosecutor confronted Bankman-Fried with evidence of his alleged guilt, it seemed obvious that he belongs in jail." Oddly, Bankman-Fried’s downfall might actually restore trust in crypto, said Anita Ramaswamy in Reuters. The swift conviction should be a wake-up call. It may even "cause a collective sigh of relief" from firms using digital currency technology "to solve real problems like streamlining cross-border payments and remittances."

This story isn’t really about crypto or arcane financial instruments, said Josie Cox in The Guardian. It’s about our urge to believe in the next big thing. Too many of us keep "stumbling into the trap of mythologizing shiny new technology and the people who push it," be that SBF or Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes or WeWork’s Adam Neumann or Nikola’s Trevor Milton. This trial was a good counterweight: In the end, it was about "good old fashioned fraud and conspiracy." We’re looking "for an innovation that would actually change our ailing world," so we ignore all the clues that "things might actually be too good to be true."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

'The path we are on will further drive us apart'

Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post

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'Biden's energy policy stinks, but not because it reduces oil production'

Dominic Pino at National Review

Republicans need some new energy talking points, says Dominic Pino at National Review. In this week's presidential primary debate, Republican candidates blasted President Biden's green-energy push and insisted that increasing domestic oil production would decrease prices, even though U.S. oil production reached a record 405 million barrels in August. Biden's green-energy subsidies are wasteful and distort energy investment, but attacking him "for low oil production in a time of record-high oil production" doesn't help conservatives' cause. 

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'Crypto critics are having a moment'

Chicago Tribune editorial board

Sam Bankman-Fried was a disaster for cryptocurrency, says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. His looting cost customers of his now-collapsed FTX exchange billions, and shook the public's confidence in digital currency. But Bankman-Fried's "recent criminal fraud conviction provides an opportunity to break with an unsavory past and chart a respectable future." Crypto still has great potential. To realize it, the industry, regulators, and Congress have to get together on "stronger, better-fitting rules" to restore its reputation.

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'It's going to be 1977 forever if Republicans keep this up'

David Harsanyi in The Federalist

"The GOP has perhaps the strongest case to make for taking power in decades," says David Harsanyi in The Federalist. The border is a disaster. President Biden "is a doddering, incoherent mess." But Republicans are squandering this opportunity by failing to come up with a coherent message on the economy, consistently voters' top issue. Blame GOP populists, who focus their energy on "subservience to Trump" and "relitigating 2020," which will only lead Republicans to irrelevance.  

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'Let more immigrants come humanely and legally'

David J. Bier in The New York Times

President Biden has maintained some of Donald Trump's "most extreme" border policies, says David J. Bier in The New York Times, but Republicans still attack him as the "Open Border President." Actually, Biden's predecessor released a slightly higher percentage of "border crossers," and deported far fewer. Biden will never "appease his critics," so he should stop trying. "Instead he should stake his legacy" on "legalizing immigration" so more people can come in "humanely and legally."

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'Tuberville is looking like an unguided torpedo'

The Wall Street Journal editorial board

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is going about his fight against Pentagon abortion policy all wrong, says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. The policy of reimbursing personnel for abortion travel "is legally dubious under federal prohibitions for public financing of abortion." But "blocking promotions in bulk" risks driving valuable officers to retire early out of frustration. Other GOP senators are right to be worried about the "growing political and strategic risks of Sen. Tuberville's counterproductive stand."

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'Robbing the Republicans of anti-climate talking points'

Liza Featherstone in The New Republic

The United Auto Workers might have just ended the "culture war on electric vehicles," says Liza Featherstone in The New Republic. By forcing the Big Three automakers to agree to big pay increases, the UAW's "extraordinarily effective" strike ensured that "the transition to electric vehicles will protect good," high-wage jobs for American workers. That robbed the Republicans of one of the main "anti-climate talking points" they use to argue green energy will bring "economic disaster."

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'A founder who twisted idealism into fraud'

Lora Kelley in The Atlantic

Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud conviction confirmed the lie in his narrative — "that he was a good guy, funneling his riches" into making "the world a better place," says Lora Kelley in The Atlantic. This kind of storytelling sells well in the tech world. So don't expect Silicon Valley to have learned its lesson from the nerdy, one-time crypto king's implosion. Tech investors are suckers for "big characters" who make even bigger promises. 

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Sam Bankman-Fried, who ran one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, faces decades in prison after he was found guilty of fraud and money laundering.

The trial in New York of the 31-year-old "tousle-haired mogul", who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, "laid bare the hubris and risk-taking across the crypto industry", said The New York Times.

The verdict "capped what prosecutors called one of the biggest financial frauds in American history", said Politico. But commentators are at odds over exactly what it means for the future of the crypto industry.

What did the papers say?

For the "broader cryptocurrency business", the conviction "could provide a long-awaited chance to move forward", said Reuters.

For some in the sector, Bankman-Fried's conviction on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy "points to the end of an era of risky and wrongful practices", and "a more regulated future", said Bloomberg.

But others outside the industry are "taking a much tougher line", arguing that the verdict "confirms crypto as a sector riven with weaknesses that attract criminals, hackers and rogue states".

Bankman-Fried, who was arrested last year after his firm, FTX, went bankrupt, has "done irrevocable damage to this industry", said Sky News, "reinforcing the narrative of a Wild West where consumers have no protection". So it will "take years for the crypto world to rehabilitate its image, if it ever does at all", added the broadcaster.

Jordan Estes, a former prosecutor, told Wired that the US Department of Justice will consider the conviction a "signature victory" and its first high-profile crypto scalp. He was "crypto royalty", which "lends his conviction a symbolic importance".

But "despite widespread predictions of cryptocurrency's demise", there is "still a market for virtual assets", said Reuters, noting that the price of bitcoin has more than doubled this year as "large financial institutions" like BlackRock "seek to make the virtual currency more respectable". 

What next?

Further legal headaches are expected for crypto. After Bankman-Fried "met his fate" with the justice system, "much of the rest of the industry is facing its own legal showdowns with the [US] government", said Politico.

"Crypto giants" like Binance, Coinbase and Gemini are "still heading for courtroom clashes" with regulators that could "prove an even greater peril to the market's future" than FTX’s collapse in 2022.

Closer to home, the UK government unveiled plans earlier this week to regulate the crypto industry in a similar way to traditional financial investments that would require all crypto companies to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

But this plan has already come under attack by a former head of the regulator, noted the Financial Times. Charles Randell, who quit as chair of the FCA last year, warned that "investors risked being harmed if crypto assets were labelled as regular investments".

We can expect some within the sector to try to position themselves as non-crypto projects, said The New York Times. Several crypto companies have "tried rebranding", it said. Autograph, an NFT start-up co-founded by former American football star Tom Brady, "quietly removed some of the crypto language from its marketing", and Paradigm Capital "erased mentions of the word 'crypto' from its website", instead describing itself as a “research-driven technology investment firm".

Meanwhile, the broader tech industry has "done what it does best: move on to the next thing", it added. Silicon Valley is "no longer fixated on crypto" and although crypto firms "may come back around in a few years", for now "they are out of style and therefore irrelevant".

As for Bankman-Fried, it is unclear whether he will appeal against the verdict. He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, insisting that he had acted in good faith. His sentencing has been set for 28 March next year.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX crypto exchange, which collapsed last November, is scheduled to appear in a New York court next week, charged with eight counts of fraud, which, if proven, could mean a 115-year prison sentence. 

"It is a matter of public record that customer funds have been mishandled," said Zoe Williams in The Guardian: at least $4 billion in client funds was transferred from the crypto platform to Bankman-Fried's private trading firm, Alameda Research. So the question for the jury is essentially: "conman or idiot". 

Yet much more is at stake. Worth $26 billion in his short-lived prime, Bankman-Fried has become "the embodiment of crypto: his rise astronomical, his demise spectacular". The case will shed light on the wild west-style regulation that allowed him to operate. It isn't just "the crypto king" who's on trial; "it's the future of crypto regulation".

'A mammoth recovery task'

Ahead of the proceedings, FTX's current CEO and restructuring expert, John Ray, has been overseeing "a mammoth recovery task", said Teresa Xie on Bloomberg. Ray helped untangle the mess following energy giant Enron's bankruptcy in 2007. And of late, he has been "accelerating efforts to recoup billions of dollars" – notably suing Bankman-Fried's parents, professors at Stanford Law School, for allegedly siphoning off millions from FTX in "fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds". 

Outside investors are trying to get a piece of the bankruptcy pie too. "Distressed-debt investors", including Silver Point Capital, Diameter Capital and Attestor Capital, have bought more than $250 million worth of FTX debts – "betting that the company's lengthy bankruptcy process will uncover additional valuable assets".

'Pivotal' evidence of former girlfriend

In all, Bankman-Fried is charged with causing the loss of more than $8bn in customer assets, said Sheelah Kolhatkar in The New Yorker. Victims range from the supermodel Gisele Bündchen to "construction workers, small-business owners and college students". 

Ironically, before the collapse, SBF, as he was known, was regarded as a white knight in the wider crypto meltdown and an altruistic philanthropist. That profile, and the backing of venture capitalists such as Sequoia Capital, persuaded many investors that his company was sound, despite his eccentric media appearances and reports of louche living at FTX's Bahamas HQ. 

It won't help Bankman-Fried's case that four of his close lieutenants – including his on/off girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who ran Alameda Research – have reached deals with prosecutors, said James Gordon in the Daily Mail. Her evidence is likely to be "pivotal". This promises to be a fascinating financial trial, but a powerful human story too.