Skip to main content

Newsletter: Even the most pro-Trump crypto faithful think Trump’s new crypto scheme is a terrible idea. Also, an FTX crypto executive earns some benefit of the doubt, and a lawsuit accuses “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli of disrespecting the Wu-Tang Clan.

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-65/

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency


Issue 65 – World Liberty Fiasco

Molly White (Citation Needed)
#crypto #cryptocurrency #CitationNeeded
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
Molly White
• •

New filings in the FTX case, made after executive Ryan Salame pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 7.5 years, raise the possibility that something weird happened with respect to promises about an investigation into his partner, Michelle Bond.

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency

The government then filed their full response, reiterating their earlier descriptions of conversations between the prosecution team and Salame’s then legal team, and also raising some procedural objections to the petition. This time they attached copies of contemporaneous notes that — assuming they are accurate summaries of the conversationsb — seem to support their assertions that they were extremely clear to Salame’s former attorneys that Salame’s plea would not impact the status of Bond’s investigation. However, other notes put some doubt in my mind as to whether Salame’s lawyers actually heard what they were saying, and whether those lawyers properly communicated this to him. One email chain shows his legal team expressing surprise this spring over ongoing investigations into Bond, as though they didn’t recall the earlier conversation. Email from Salame’s lawyers to the Bond’s prosecution team in April: Sheb, Thank you for the introduction. We are surprised to hear from you given our course of dealing with the FTX prosecution team, which led us to believe that this matter was not going to be pursued. Best regards, Gina Portion of a reply by Salame’s lawyers to Bond’s prosecution team: On another note, to answer the question posed in your earlier-in-time email, we have reviewed our notes, and they do not reflect the statement that you recounted to us on our prior call, nor do they reflect the statement that you made below about a disposition with Mr. Salame not resolving
And to be clear, these were not budget bin, amateur hour lawyers. At the time, he was being represented by two ex-DOJ lawyers working for the white-shoe law firm Mayer Brown: Jason Linder and Gina Parlovecchio. It seems to me that there are three possibilities here: Salame is falsely claiming that prosecutors improperly induced him to plead guilty, and that promises about Bond never happened Salame’s former team of bigshot lawyers royally screwed up by leading Salame to believe that Bond’s investigation would be terminated if he pleaded guilty even though the government had expressly told them it would not Some of the most powerful prosecutors in the country did, in fact, make these verbal promises to Salame, but simultaneously laid a paper trail reflecting the exact opposite, and are now lying about it under penalty of perjury The prosecutors’ argument currently lies somewhere between options 1 and 2. They maintain that such a promise was never made, and argue that the petition should be denied outright, suggesting option 1. However, their inclusion of the emails from Parlovecchio, and their request that if Kaplan does hold a hearing, that he also examine Salame’s attorney–client communications, tips things into option 2 territory somewhat. It’s not clear to me yet which of options 2 or 3 Salame is going to argue. Given the emails from Parlovecchio, it definitely seems like it might be appropriate to dig into those attorney—client communications to get the other side of
story, particularly from such qualified lawyers, but perhaps they’re playing 3D chess. Who really knows what’s happening, at this stage, but that email from his former lawyer definitely makes me more inclined to give him some benefit of the doubt.
#crypto #cryptocurrency #CitationNeeded
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
Molly White
• •

Your Honor, the Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency

#crypto #cryptocurrency #CitationNeeded
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
Molly White
• •

The Trump family’s latest crypto scheme, “World Liberty Financial”, has the makings of the biggest clusterfuck in Web3 is Going Just Great history.

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency

The project hasn’t even launched yet, and it’s off to a bumpy start. First, Donald Trump Jr. had to issue a statement to try to stop people from buying up all the fake tokens purporting to be associated with their murky project [I64]. Then, Twitter accounts for Lara and Tiffany Trump were both compromised and used to send tweets announcing a supposed token launch. “This is a scam!!!” tweeted Eric, himself retweeting the tweet from his wife’s account containing the scam token address. Now, CoinDesk has gotten hold of a white paper for this supposed World Liberty Financial, which they note appears to be a clone of Dough Finance, a crypto lending platform that was hacked for around $2 million just a month and a half ago [W3IGG]. The hack was not a sophisticated one, and instead exploited sloppiness on behalf of the development team. The four people who built Dough are all listed as members of the World Liberty Financial team, as are Trump’s sons (including 18-year-old Barron, who they list as a “DeFi visionary”). Zachary Folkman, a Dough Finance creator who is now listed as the head of operations for World Liberty Finance, previously ran a pick-up artist advice platform called “Date Hotter Girls”.25 You should really just read the piece by CoinDesk, they did some great reporting here.
What better time to launch a transparently grifty “high-yield” cryptocurrency business than two months before your presidential election? Donald Trump, and especially his sons, have been teasing an upcoming cryptocurrency project that seems to be rapidly shapeshifting. First, they were all teasing something called “The DeFiant Ones” (a play on decentralized finance, or defi), with hashtags #BeDeFiant and tweets warning people to not “get left behind”. Then Eric Trump said something about the project involving “digital real estate”, though its unclear if he was speaking metaphorically or was actually referring to the metaverse “land” fad that more or less came and went. He did immediately follow up this statement by saying “It’s equitable. It’s collateral anyone can get access to and do so instantly,” leaving me to wonder if anyone in the Trump family has ever set foot near an average person trying to buy a house these days. Now the flim-flam family is all talking about “World Liberty Financial”, with a website promising access to “high-yield crypto investments”, a statement that should immediately set off alarm bells in anyone’s head.
The project is making even the Trumpiest people in crypto nervous. Nic Carter, a crypto venture capitalist and outspoken Trump supporter, tweeted: is there something that we, as crypto twitter, can collectively do to stop the launch of world liberty coin? i think it genuinely damages trump's electoral prospects, especially if it gets hacked (it'll be the juiciest DeFi target ever and it's forked from a protocol that itself was hacked). it's also an obvious target for the SEC. at best it's an unnecessary distraction, at worst it's a huge embarrassment and source of (additional) legal trouble. so are we signing a petition or what? Commenting on the hack of the two Trump family Twitter accounts, he added: “can't secure twitter accounts but i'm sure they'll be able to protect an (already hacked) defi protocol from hacks”.26 All I can say is that if he launches this before the election and it gets hacked, it’s a strong contender for biggest clusterfuck in the history of Web3 is Going Just Great.
#crypto #cryptocurrency #CitationNeeded

reshared this

in reply to Molly White

Molly White
Molly White
• •

Consider signing up for a pay-what-you-want subscription to my newsletter.

My writing is never paywalled, and your support goes long way to helping me continue doing this. You can also sign up for free to get my writing in your email.

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

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency

Citation Needed

Citation Needed
#crypto #cryptocurrency #CitationNeeded
in reply to Molly White

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈
FediThing 🏳️‍🌈
• •

Content warning: US politics, Trump being a conman

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to Molly White

craigtozzi
craigtozzi
• •
The priceless transcript from jury selection for that trial
in reply to clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

OCRbot
OCRbot
• •

Content warning: OCR Output (chars: 506)

@clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛
⇧