From the erratic ups and downs in bitcoin and ethereum value, to the explosion in initial coin offerings, and the unstoppable demand for mining-ready GPUs, cryptocurrency has become an inescapable story. It’s also become increasingly difficult to make sense of — as the industry expands, new currencies sprout up, and companies form overnight. Check here for the complete coverage of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, monero, Venezuela’s petro, cryptocurrencies at large, and the ways that ICOs and the underlying blockchain technology are helping shape a burgeoning industry and giving life to a new wave of startups and entrepreneurs.
Bernie Moreno, an Ohio car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur, unseated Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) with a little help from his friends.
Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and other crypto firms poured more than $40 million into Moreno’s campaign — and their bet paid off. Moreno flipped the seat, getting Republicans even closer to controlling the Senate.
As the vote count increasingly points toward Trump, who courted the crypto industry throughout his campaign, the price of Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high of over $74,000.
Forbes reports on “evidence of rampant wash trading on Polymarket,” a prediction market site backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Wash trading is a form of market manipulation. “The suspicious activity on Polymarket raises questions about the accuracy of the site,” Forbes writes.
Singh, now the fourth FTX executive to be sentenced after Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and Ryan Salame, will receive three years of supervised release.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has presided over the cases, said that Mr. Singh provided crucial assistance to the government and that he had played a “much more limited” role in the scheme than his colleagues had.
[The New York Times]
Here’s why embattled SEC chair Gary Gensler is a hot-button presidential issue.
Your vote matters. Here’s how it will change the future.
Its $15 million funding round was led by Blockchain Capital, a venture capital group that has invested in crypto firms, like Kraken, OpenSea, and Coinbase. Despite this, Bluesky says it’s not changing its stance on blockchains:
This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.)
Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto startup announced a shorter name and a new scanning orb today at an event, as reported by Axios. You can watch a replay of the event on YouTube.
Here’s his LinkedIn update about prison!
Following a lengthy bankruptcy process, FTX says 98 percent of customers who lost assets in the collapsed crypto exchange will receive their money back within 60 days. Delaware Judge John Dorsey called the outcome a “model case for how to deal with a very complex Chapter 11 proceeding.”
Crypto businesses keep accidentally hiring IT workers from North Korea. This is a problem because it is, first of all, against US law but second, “CoinDesk encountered multiple examples of companies hiring DPRK IT workers and subsequently getting hacked.”
Nike is moving on from CEO John Donahoe less than a week after Bloomberg published its unflatteringly-titled profile of his four-year tenure.
Under Donahoe, Nike de-emphasized retail stores to chase direct sales, flooded the market with retros like the Panda Dunks, and put the RTFKT NFT shoe brand on the same level as the Swoosh and Jordan Jumpman.
Today’s announcement doesn’t include the RTFKT logo.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argue that Judge Lewis Kaplan unfairly limited the evidence that was allowed in court, including that Bankman-Fried had relied on lawyers in making his decisions. Also stealing all that money wasn’t really that bad because his victims were eventually repaid.
[The New York Times]
Trump will roll out “World Liberty Financial” on X Spaces, at 8pm ET on September 16th.
The former president announced the project last month, providing virtually no details about what it actually is. We’ll find out next week — assuming the stream doesn’t crash like Trump’s interview with Elon Musk.
Tigran Gambaryan, a compliance officer at crypto giant Binance, has been detained in Nigeria since February on charges of tax evasion and money laundering. In March, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in the US.
Reuters reports that Gambaryan, a US citizen, has once again applied for bail, saying he is suffering from a herniated disc and “bouts of malaria and pneumonia.”
Insider accounts of the company reveal a chaotic work environment, ever-shifting priorities, and troubles with the SEC
The fourth collection of digital trading cards shows Trump in typical over-the-top fantasies, like wielding a lightning bolt that apparently represents his role as the “crypto president.” There’s also a physical “collector’s edition” card with a piece of Trump’s debate night suit.
It’s not clear how this ties into Trump’s cryptocurrency platform, which we still don’t fully understand.
Ryan Salame is due to begin his seven-year prison sentence next month, but now he claims prosecutors reneged on an agreement to drop a campaign finance investigation into his partner, Michelle Bond, in exchange for his guilty plea.
Charges filed today in the SDNY accuse the two of faking a $400k consulting payment from FTX to fund her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022.
Michael Lewis has a new essay to accompany the paperback version of Going Infinite, a book about Sam Bankman-Fried that appeared just before his trial. Sure, SBF did crimes because he was an arrogant gambler, but Lewis still loves his gamer son.
[Washington Post]
Conway wrote a furious, and occasionally all-caps, email to his former crypto allies, including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, after finding out they were going to try to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown. “Im the one using my 25+ year old personal relationships to help this movement the most significantly and not one person bothered to inform me.”
Sam Altman’s crypto-adjacent Worldcoin has irritated global regulators:
It has been raided in Hong Kong, blocked in Spain, fined in Argentina and criminally investigated in Kenya. A ruling looms on whether it can keep operating in the European Union.
