YOU don’t have to be Ebenezer Scrooge to want to handle your own money. The prudent management of income and expenditure is a necessary and commendable skill in our affluent 21st century, and a basic element of personal independence. Yet our governments are hell-bent on removing it from us for ever.
As the Bank of Canada seeks consultation from Canadians on its design of a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC), digital privacy experts are warning that the technology could be used by governments to track payments and freeze dissidents’ bank accounts.
“CBDCs could be a nightmare for democracy, for civil liberties, and potentially all sorts of human rights,” Ori Freiman, a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University’s Digital Society Lab, who is researching the responsible implementation of emerging technologies, said in an interview.
Chrystia Freeland is surely the most diligent finance minister this country has ever had — so busy that she can spare an hour of her day on Tuesday to appear at the finance committee to talk about the budget implementation bill, but not a minute more.
The Conservative MPs on the committee have ground proceedings to a halt of late, demanding that the finance minister spend a couple of hours answering questions on an omnibus bill they say amends 51 other acts, Freeland having declined three previous invitations.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has issued his first detailed legal defense since prosecutors accused him of fraud, seeking to dismiss several of the charges and claiming that the high-powered law firm representing FTX in its bankruptcy has been doing the government’s bidding.
In court filings late Monday, lawyers for Mr. Bankman-Fried said FTX and its lawyers at the firm Sullivan & Cromwell had become de facto agents of federal prosecutors building the criminal case against him and might be withholding crucial evidence.
“FTX’s legal advisors went to the government to accuse Mr. Bankman-Fried behind his back without knowing the full facts, and ultimately forced him to step down as C.E.O.,” the lawyers wrote.
This sounds like the “If we had more time we coulda covered it up” defense.
Early adopters thought cryptocurrencies would be free from prying eyes. But tracking the flow of funds has become a big business.
Before a new breed of cryptocurrency detectives helped bring him down, Ryan Felton marketed his crypto scheme with a grandiose promise: He was creating “Netflix on the blockchain.”
He called the crypto-themed streaming service FLiK. For a small amount of the popular digital currency Ether, customers could purchase a FLiK token, which would give them access to shows and movies broadcast on the new platform. Mr. Felton described the project as an “entertainment revolution”; crypto enthusiasts bought more than $2 million worth of FLiK coins.
But the streaming business never materialized. Instead, Mr. Felton bought a $1.5 million house, along with $32,000 in diamonds. He spent $180,000 more on a red Ferrari.
Cash will become less useable as high street shops increasingly reject bank notes because of the rise in digital payments, a senior Bank of England official has said.
It will become harder to spend physical money in the coming years because contactless payments are on the rise and consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for purchases, according to Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the central bank and a member of its rate-setting committee.
All the better to track you with …
During the Cold War, the East-West divide was commonly portrayed as pitting communism against capitalism. The Soviet Union, its satellites, and allies operated command economies in which centralized authorities directed the allocation of resources, agricultural production, and industrial manufacturing of the State. The United States and the Western Bloc championed liberal democratic norms and free markets. That division, of course, was always too simplistic. Not only did the US support third-world dictatorships when doing so would produce strategic advantages against the USSR, but also the demarcation between free and controlled markets was never so plainly cut-and-dried.
Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.
Texas was gasping for electricity. Winter Storm Uri had knocked out power plants across the state, leaving tens of thousands of homes in icy darkness. By the end of Feb. 14, 2021, nearly 40 people had died, some from the freezing cold.
Meanwhile, in the husk of a onetime aluminum smelting plant an hour outside of Austin, row upon row of computers were using enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes as they raced to earn Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly joked about his doomed hedge fund Alameda Research losing track of as much as $50 million in assets, telling another executive: “Such is life.”
“Alameda is unauditable” and “hilariously beyond any threshold of any auditor being able to even get partially through an audit,” Bankman-Fried wrote in an email about the now-defunct Alameda that was cited in court papers by FTX.
This is bad, a former senior employee who resigned on principle details his ignored warnings to SBF and his insider cronies.
FTX’s ex-US boss saw bonus slashed after ‘protracted disagreement’ with SBF: report
The US has accused former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried of paying a $40mn bribe to one or more Chinese government officials in a revised indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege Bankman-Fried sent the bribe in cryptocurrency to Chinese officials in order to regain access to trading accounts that had been frozen by law enforcement in the country. The accounts were linked to Alameda Research, FTX’s sister company.
The new bribery charge was added to twelve counts already faced by the former FTX chief, whose exchange collapsed in November last year after it was unable to meet a wave of withdrawal demands from customers.
Maybe wonderboy will do serious time. Maybe.
Two victims of a Canadian 23-year-old who styled himself as a cryptocurrency genius, only to allegedly defraud investors of millions, have emerged – as the self-styled prodigy’s parents agree to return cars worth $100,000 and $812,000 in cash.
A Toronto realtor, Sacha Singh, sparked the collapsed of Aiden Pleterski’s alleged scheme in July 2022, when he filed court documents requesting the immediate freezing of Pleterski’s accounts, in a bid to recoup the CA $4.56 million ($3.32 million) he invested.
A grandmother who lost CA $50,000 ($34,000) said she does not know ‘how he can live with himself’.
Ontario’s self-described crypto king was abducted, tortured, and beaten for days as his kidnappers looked to solicit millions in ransom, his father told a court in December.
New documents, obtained by CTV News Toronto, include details of the December incident where Aiden Pleterski was allegedly abducted from downtown Toronto and driven around southern Ontario for about three days.
The nearly 750-page report, released on March 14, also contains the latest findings in a months-long pursuit to trace millions of dollars invested into cryptocurrency and foreign exchange with the 23-year-old before he was petitioned into bankruptcy.
Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda CEO who has pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges, received $6 million from the crypto-trading firm – a fraction of the billions paid to Sam Bankman-Fried, court filings reviewed by Insider show.
Alameda Research has been accused of using customer deposits from Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX for daily operations, including risky investments. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 11 after it imploded, wiping out billions in customer deposits.
Disgraced ex-cryptocurrency kingpin Sam Bankman Fried and his since-bankrupt company FTX scored a meeting with a top regulator and sought to sway them to adopt industry-friendly rules months before the exchange’s historic collapse, emails show.
In May 2022, FTX pitched the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on why it was apparently poised to be a “superior” cryptocurrency exchange and was swiftly granted a meeting with its chairman, Martin Gruenberg, according to emails obtained by the watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with the Washington Examiner.
CEO to Prison Bitch is going to be a harsh adjustment unless his Democrat bribes get him a spot in Club Fed.
Thousands of people are believed to have lost their savings after investing in a cryptocurrency trading app called iEarn Bot.
Experts who have investigated the company say it could be one of the largest crypto scandals to date.
Trading in cryptocurrencies has become popular, with people often promised large rewards over short periods.
