Americans lost over $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency fraud schemes in 2023, with investment fraud accounting for the majority of losses, according to the FBI (PDF). The Associated Press reports: The FBI received nearly 70,000 complaints in 2023 by victims of financial fraud involving bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies, according to the FBI. The most rampant scheme was investment fraud, which accounted for $3.96 billion of the losses. "The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, the speed of irreversible transactions, and the ability to transfer value around the world make cryptocurrency an attractive vehicle for criminals, while creating challenges to recover stolen funds," wrote Michael Nordwall, assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division.

Uniswap Labs, the firm behind the world's most popular decentralized exchange, is under fire from a variety of regulators. From a report: If regulators want to throw a giant monkey wrench into the crypto economy, making people afraid to use Uniswap would be a great way to do it. Uniswap Labs today agreed to a $175,000 settlement with the CFTC, while some of its chief investors received subpoenas from the New York Department of Financial Services. The CFTC settlement concerned trading for various tokens that represent leveraged trades on leading crypto assets, such as bitcoin (BTC) and ETH. This all comes after the SEC previously served Uniswap Labs with a Wells Notice, which indicates that it's likely to take legal action.

To make America the "crypto capital of the planet," former U.S. President Donald Trump promised crypto-friendly policies, writes Politico, which "could have a new beneficiary: his own family." Trump has vowed to enact an array of pro-crypto policies in a bid to win votes — and campaign cash — from digital asset enthusiasts in recent months. Now, he's weaving the overtures into his pitch for his sons' forthcoming startup... It remains unclear what the Trump sons' crypto venture will look like. They have been teasing their plans to launch it for weeks, in part by positioning it as an alternative to the use of big banks.... ["Be defiant," reads the tagline on their World Liberty Financial home page — with nothing more than its name and the words "Coming soon."]

Trump's sons took over control of their father's business, the Trump Organization, after he became president in 2017, but he retained ownership of the company... It is unclear whether the crypto startup would be launched as part of the Trump Organization or as a separate entity. Either way, ethics experts and watchdogs say the crypto business could create the appearance of a conflict of interest if Trump wins back the White House this fall... From an "optics perspective, it's terrible," said Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush and later ran for Congress as a Democrat. But he said it wouldn't violate any ethics laws.

The family venture is the latest way Trump has embraced the digital asset industry, which is pouring more than $160 million into the 2024 elections as it seeks to help elect allies up and down the ballot. Trump has also marketed his own line of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are digital images of the former president that fans can purchase for $99... Trump's NFT sales could also raise ethics concerns, said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for communications at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington....

"[P]rior conflicts and illegalities took advantage of preexisting loopholes," said Norman Eisen, an ethics lawyer who served in the Obama White House and later helped build the first impeachment case against Trump. "Here, Trump appears to be promising to create the loopholes while his family is simultaneously designing a business venture to exploit them."
The article notes that Trump promoted his son's crypto venture on X this week with audio from Trump's speech at a crypto conference in July. "He first revealed his pro-crypto leanings — after previously deriding digital currency — at a Mar-a-Lago event in May with supporters who bought his crypto-linked digital trading cards..."

"Trump is also facing new questions about what he would do with his stake in the parent company of the social media service Truth Social," the article adds. (Although this week the stock hit a new low. After losing 50% of its value in six weeks, it's dropped below $20 per share for the first time since it started publicly trading...)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: A judge in Ohio has issued a temporary restraining order against a security researcher who presented evidence that a recent ransomware attack on the city of Columbus scooped up reams of sensitive personal information, contradicting claims made by city officials. The order, issued by a judge in Ohio's Franklin County, came after the city of Columbus fell victim to a ransomware attack on July 18 that siphoned 6.5 terabytes of the city's data. A ransomware group known as Rhysida took credit for the attack and offered to auction off the data with a starting bid of about $1.7 million in bitcoin. On August 8, after the auction failed to find a bidder, Rhysida released what it said was about 45 percent of the stolen data on the group's dark web site, which is accessible to anyone with a TOR browser.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said on August 13 that a "breakthrough" in the city's forensic investigation of the breach found that the sensitive files Rhysida obtained were either encrypted or corrupted, making them "unusable" to the thieves. Ginther went on to say the data's lack of integrity was likely the reason the ransomware group had been unable to auction off the data. Shortly after Ginther made his remarks, security researcher David Leroy Ross contacted local news outlets and presented evidence that showed the data Rhysida published was fully intact and contained highly sensitive information regarding city employees and residents. Ross, who uses the alias Connor Goodwolf, presented screenshots and other data that showed the files Rhysida had posted included names from domestic violence cases and Social Security numbers for police officers and crime victims. Some of the data spanned years.

On Thursday, the city of Columbus sued Ross (PDF) for alleged damages for criminal acts, invasion of privacy, negligence, and civil conversion. The lawsuit claimed that downloading documents from a dark web site run by ransomware attackers amounted to him "interacting" with them and required special expertise and tools. The suit went on to challenge Ross alerting reporters to the information, which ii claimed would not be easily obtained by others. "Only individuals willing to navigate and interact with the criminal element on the dark web, who also have the computer expertise and tools necessary to download data from the dark web, would be able to do so," city attorneys wrote. "The dark web-posted data is not readily available for public consumption. Defendant is making it so." The same day, a Franklin County judge granted the city's motion for a temporary restraining order (PDF) against Ross. It bars the researcher "from accessing, and/or downloading, and/or disseminating" any city files that were posted to the dark web. The motion was made and granted "ex parte," meaning in secret before Ross was informed of it or had an opportunity to present his case.

"AI is already able to mimic sight and hearing," writes CNBC. And now a startup named Osmo "wants to use the technology to digitize another: smell."

Co-founded by a former Google research scientist, the company built an AI that's "superhuman in its ability to predict what things smelled like," the company's co-founder says. And he believes this might actually prove useful. "We've known that smell contains information we can use to detect disease. But computers can't speak that language and can't interpret that data yet... We will eventually be able to detect disease with scent and we're on our way to building that technology. It's not going to happen this year or anytime soon, but we're on our way."

CoinTelegraph describes how the company invented a training dataset from scratch — a kind of "smell map" with labelled examples of molecular bond associations to teach the AI to identify specific patterns. The team also hopes to develop a method to recreate smells using molecular synthesis. This would, for example, allow a computer in one place to "smell" something and then send that information to another computer for resynthesis — essentially teleporting odor over the internet. This also means scent could join sight and sound as part of the marketing and branding world.

Starting today, Morgan Stanley's advisors are allowed to offer bitcoin ETFs to some clients -- a first among major Wall Street banks. "Those funds are BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund," reports CNBC. From the report: Morgan Stanley made the move in response to demand from clients and in an attempt to follow an evolving marketplace for digital assets [...].The bank is still striking a note of caution, however, in the rollout: Only clients with a net worth of at least $1.5 million, an aggressive risk tolerance and the desire to make speculative investments are suitable for bitcoin ETF solicitation, said the people. The investments are for taxable brokerage accounts, not retirement accounts, they added. The bank will monitor clients' crypto holdings to make sure they don't end up with excessive exposure to the volatile asset class, according to the sources.

The only crypto investments approved for solicited purchase at Morgan Stanley are the pair of bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock and Fidelity; private funds from Galaxy and FS NYDIG that the bank made available starting in 2021 were phased out earlier this year. Morgan Stanley is watching how the market for newly approved ether ETFs develops and hasn't committed to whether it would provide access to those, the people said.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump spoke at Nashville's Bitcoin Conference on Saturday.

But he wasn't the only one there making headlines, according to a local newspaper called the Tennesseean: Republican Sens. Cynthia Lummis and Tim Scott pledged their resolute support for the cryptocurrency industry at Nashville's Bitcoin2024 conference Friday — moments before whistleblower and political dissident Edward Snowden warned attendees to be wary of politicians trying to win them over. "Cast a vote, but don't join a cult," Snowden said. "They are not our tribe. They are not your personality. They have their own interests, their own values, their own things that they're chasing. Try to get what you need from them, but don't give yourself to them."

Snowden didn't call out any politicians specifically, but the conference has drawn national attention for its robust lineup of legislators including former President Donald Trump, independent presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and a number of other senators. "Does this feel normal to you?" Snowden said. "When you look at the candidates, when you look at the dynamics, even the people on stage giving all the speeches, I'm not saying they're terrible at all, but it's a little unusual. The fact that they're here is a little unusual...."

Two key tenets of Bitcoin are transparency and decentralization, which means anyone can view all Bitcoin transactions on a public ledger. Snowden said this kind of metadata could be dangerous in the wrong hands, especially with artificial intelligence innovations making it easier to collect. "It is fantasy to imagine they're not doing this," he said.... He added that other countries like China or Russia could be collecting this same data. Snowden said he's afraid the collection of transaction data could happen across financial institutions and ultimately be used against the customers.
Also speaking was RFK Jr — who asked why Snowden hadn't already been pardoned, along with Julian Assange and Ross Ulbricht, when Donald Trump was president (as Kennedy promised to do). According to USA Today, Kennedy promised more than just creating a strategic reserve of Bitcoin worth more than half a trillion dollars: Kennedy also pledged to sign an executive order directing the IRS to treat Bitcoin as an eligible asset for 1031 Exchange into real property — making transactions unreportable and by extension nontaxable — which prompted a roar of approval from the crowd.
Though Trump's appearance also ended with a promise to have the government create a "strategic national bitcoin stockpile," NBC News notes that Trump "stopped short of offering many details." Immediately following Trump's remarks, Senator Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said she would introduce a bill to create the reserve. However, the price of bitcoin fell slightly in the wake of Trump's remarks Saturday, perhaps reflecting crypto traders' unmet expectations for a more definitive commitment on the reserve idea from the presidential candidate...

Shortly after his morning remarks, Bitcoin Magazine reported that a group of Democratic representatives and candidates had sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee urging party leaders to be more supportive of crypto...

On Saturday, the Financial Times reported [presidential candidate Kamala] Harris had approached top crypto companies seeking a "reset" of relations, citing unnamed sources.
Ironically, in the end one conference attendee ended up telling Bloomberg that "It doesn't really matter who the president is. I don't really care much about it, because Bitcoin will do its thing regardless."

Speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a number of cryptocurrency-related pledges:

• Trump promised that if elected, he'd commute the sentence of Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served. "It's enough."

• Trump promised to change the top personnel at America's Securities and Exchange Commission. "On Day One, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman," Trump told the crowd, drawing a long round of applause. ("I didn't know he was that unpopular," Trump joked — then repeated his promise to appoint "a new SEC chairman who believes America should build the future, not block the future, which is what they're doing.")

• Trump also promised that "As president, I will immediately shut down Operation Chokepoint 2.0." (For context, Operation Chokepoint was an Obama-era program — ended during Trump's presidency — to scrutinize bank lending to "high-risk" merchants, mostly predatory "payday" lenders. Concerns were raised that bank regulators were pressuring banks to cut off certain businesses, and while there is no official "Choke Point 2.0," the phrase has been used colloquially to describe the possibility of bank regulators pressuring specific industries like cryptocurrency.)

• Trump also announced he'd oppose a central bank digital currency — although his wording was a little idiosyncratic. "Next I will immediately order the Treasury Department and other federal agencies to cease and desist all steps necessary — because, you know, there's a thing going on in your industry. They want to move the creation of a central bank digital currency. It's over, forget it." [Audience boos CBDC's ] "CBDC — there will never be a CBDC while I'm president of the United States." (In fact a 2023 statement from America's Federal Reserve about CBDC's stresses that "no decisions have been made at this time" and that the Federal Reserve would only proceed with a CBDC after passage of an authorizing law.)

• Trump also told the audience that "We will create a framework to enable the safe and responsible expansion of staple — stablecoins," then teased the crypto-friendly audience by asking playfully "Do you know what a stablecoin is? Does anybody know — please raise your hand." Trump promised the move would "allow us to extend the dominance of the U.S. dollar to new frontiers all around the world," and that "there will be billions and billions of people brought into the crypto economy and storing their savings in bitcoin."

• Toward the end Trump said that if elected, he would direct the government not to sell any of its currently-held bitcoin, keeping it instead as the core of a "strategic national bitcoin stockpile."
  
  "As you know, most of the bitcoin currently held by the U.S. government was obtained through law enforcement action — you know that, they took it from you. 'Let's take that guy's life, let's take his family, his house, his bitcoin — we'll turn it into bitcoin.' It's been taken away from you because that's where we're going now. That's where this country is going. It's a facist regime."

In a speech which lasted for over an hour, the 78-year-old former president also criticized his political opponents, touching on topics like inflation, immigration, and his promise to "drill, baby, drill."

But Trump closed by thanking the 3,000 attendees, telling them to "have a good time with your bitcoin, and your crypto and everything else that you're playing with. And we're going to make that one of the greatest industries on earth."

US presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced during his keynote Friday at the Bitcoin Conference that he would direct the US government to buy Bitcoin until the size of its Bitcoin reserves matched its gold reserves. At current prices, that equates to $615 billion worth of gold.
RFK Jr. said: "I will sign an executive order directing the US Treasury to purchase 550 Bitcoin daily until the US has built a reserve of at least 4,000,000 Bitcoins and a position of dominance that no other country will be able to usurp."
4 million Bitcoin is 19% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist.

Yesterday, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) released electricity generation numbers for the first five months of 2024, revealing that solar power generation increased by 25% compared to the same period last year. Ars Technica's John Timmer reports: The EIA breaks down solar production according to the size of the plant. Large grid-scale facilities have their production tracked, giving the EIA hard numbers. For smaller installations, like rooftop solar on residential and commercial buildings, the agency has to estimate the amount produced, since the hardware often resides behind the metering equipment, so only shows up via lower-than-expected consumption.

In terms of utility-scale production, the first five months of 2024 saw it rise by 29 percent compared to the same period in the year prior. Small-scale solar was "only" up by 18 percent, with the combined number rising by 25.3 percent. Most other generating sources were largely flat, year over year. This includes coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric, all of which changed by 2 percent or less. Wind was up by 4 percent, while natural gas rose by 5 percent. Because natural gas is the largest single source of energy on the grid, however, its 5 percent rise represents a lot of electrons -- slightly more than the total increase in wind and solar.

Overall, energy use was up by about 4 percent compared to the same period in 2023. This could simply be a matter of changing weather conditions that required more heating or cooling. But there have been several trends that should increase electricity usage: the rise of bitcoin mining, growth of data centers, and the electrification of appliances and transport. So far, that hasn't shown up in the actual electricity usage in the US, which has stayed largely flat for decades. It could be possible that 2024 is the year where usage starts going up again. Since the findings are based on data from before some of the most productive months of the year for solar power, solar production for the year as a whole could increase by much more than 25%. Overall, the EIA predicts solar production could rise by as much as 42% in 2024.

Speaking of crypto, BlackRock's co-founder and CEO Larry Fink is now embracing crypto more than ever. From a report: In an interview with CNBC on Monday, he mentioned that he had abandoned his initial skepticism of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. He now firmly believes that there is a place for crypto in the average investor's portfolio. "I believe Bitcoin is legitimate. I'm not saying there aren't misuses like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have uncorrelated returns," Fink told CNBC host Jim Cramer.

When asked whether the U.S. budget deficit makes a case for investing in crypto, Fink responded, "absolutely." He added that crypto can help buyers hedge against countries that are devaluing their currencies.

A judge in the UK High Court has directed prosecutors to consider bringing criminal charges against computer scientist Craig Wright, after ruling that he lied "extensively and repeatedly" and committed forgery "on a grand scale" in service of his quest to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin. From a report: In a judgment published Tuesday, Justice James Mellor outlined various injunctions to be imposed upon Wright, after finding in May that he had "engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims [to be Satoshi] and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud."

By order of the judge, Wright will be prevented from claiming publicly that he is Satoshi and from bringing or threatening legal action in any jurisdiction on that basis. He will be required to pin a notice to the front page of his personal website and X feed detailing the findings against him. The matter, Mellor writes, will also be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for prosecuting criminal cases in the UK, "for consideration of whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright." It will be up to the CPS to decide whether the available evidence is sufficient to bring charges against Wright "for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents" and "whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued."

AT&T paid more than $300,000 to a member of the team that stole call records for tens of millions of customers, reports Wired — "to delete the data and provide a video demonstrating proof of deletion." The hacker, who is part of the notorious ShinyHunters hacking group that has stolen data from a number of victims through unsecured Snowflake cloud storage accounts, tells WIRED that AT&T paid the ransom in May. He provided the address for the cryptocurrency wallet that sent the currency to him, as well as the address that received it. WIRED confirmed, through an online blockchain tracking tool, that a payment transaction occurred on May 17 in the amount of 5.7 bitcoin... The hacker initially demanded $1 million from AT&T but ultimately agreed to a third of that. WIRED viewed the video that the hacker says he provided to AT&T as proof to the telecom that he had deleted its stolen data from his computer...

AT&T is one of more than 150 companies that are believed to have had data stolen from poorly secured Snowflake accounts during a hacking spree that unfolded throughout April and May. It's been previously reported that the accounts were not secured with multi-factor authentication, so after the hackers obtained usernames and passwords for the accounts, and in some cases authorization tokens, they were able to access the storage accounts of companies and siphon their data. Ticketmaster, the banking firm Santander, LendingTree, and Advance Auto Parts were all among the victims publicly identified to date...

The timeline suggests that if [John] Binns is responsible for the AT&T breach, he allegedly did it when he was likely already aware that he was under indictment for the T-Mobile hack and could face arrest for it.

Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from TIME Magazine: On an evening in December 2023, 43-year-old small business owner Sarah Rosenkranz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute; her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis; her skull throbbed. "It felt like my head was in a pressure vise being crushed," she says. "That pain was worse than childbirth." Rosenkranz's migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain, she says. This was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosenkranz's 5-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a "red beam behind her eardrums." It didn't occur to Sarah that these symptoms could be linked. But in January 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses. A mother said her 8-year-old daughter was losing her hearing and fluids were leaking from her ears. Several women said they experienced fainting spells, including while driving on the highway. Others said they were wracked by debilitating vertigo and nausea, waking up in the middle of the night mid-vomit. None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area -- and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis.

Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage. And one local doctor -- ears, nose, and throat specialist Salim Bhaloo -- says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine's noise on an almost weekly basis. "I'm sure it increases their cortisol and sugar levels, so you're getting headaches, vertigo, and it snowballs from there," Bhaloo says. "This thing is definitely causing a tremendous amount of stress. Everyone is just miserable about it." "By the end of 2024, we intend to have replaced the majority of air-cooled containers with immersion cooling, with no expansion required," said a representative for Marathon Digital Holdings, the company that owns the mine. "Initial sound readings on immersion containers indicate favorable results in sound reduction and compliance with all relevant state noise ordinances." They did not answer questions about the health impacts their mining site was causing.

"We're living in a nightmare," said Rosenkranz. She clocked the hum at 72 decibels in Indigo's bedroom in the dead of night. "Indigo's room directly faces the mine, which sits about a mile and a half away," notes TIME. She had to be pulled from her school after she developed so many ear infections from the sound.

The report also said a resident's dog "started going bald and developed debilitating anxiety shortly after the Bitcoin mine began operating four blocks away." TIME added: "Directly next door, Tom Weeks' dog Jack Rabbit Slim started shaking and hyperventilating uncontrollably for hours on end; a vet placed him on the seizure medication Gabapentin. Rosenkranz's chickens stopped laying eggs for months. And Jerry and Patricia Campbell's centuries-old oak tree, which had served as the family's hub and protector for generations of backyard family reunions and even a wedding, died suddenly three months ago."

At one point on Friday the entire cryptocurrency market shed more than $170 billion in capitalization within 24 hours, CNBC reported (citing data from CoinGecko).

"Cryptocurrencies plunged... as investors focused on the payout of nearly $9 billion to users of collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox." This dumping of coins onto the market is expected to lead to some significant selling action. The slump in crypto prices led to hefty liquidations in the derivatives markets, according to crypto data firm Coinglass, which suggests that 229,755 traders had their positions worth a combined $639.58 million liquidated [within 24 hours]. Of this sum, $540.46 million represented long trades — financial positions taken when an investor expects the price of an asset to appreciate over the long term. Also pressuring crypto markets, the German government on Thursday sold roughly 3,000 bitcoins — worth approximately $175 million as of today's prices — from a 50,000-bitcoin pile seized in connection with the movie piracy operation Movie2k, according to Arkham Intelligence....

Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday that he still sees bitcoin hitting $150,000 despite the "overhang" from Mt. Gox's upcoming disbursement of tokens to creditors.
Wired focuses on how "After a 10-Year Wait, Mt. Gox Bitcoin Is Finally Being Returned": In a highly atypical turn of events, Mt. Gox customers actually stand to profit financially from their involvement in the bankruptcy. Because only a limited amount of bitcoin was recovered, customers will receive only roughly 15 percent of the bitcoin they held on the exchange. However, the hundredfold increase in price in the intervening period means the dollar-value of the coins will far exceed the worth of their original pile.

This week the Linux Foundation announced a new organization for decentralized systems and technologies, with an aim of "fostering innovation and collaboration" in both their development and deployment.

It will build on existing Linux Foundation blockchain and digital identity projects, according to the announcement, while supporting "a rapidly growing decentralized technology landscape." To foster this broader ecosystem, LF Decentralized Trust will encompass the growing portfolio of Hyperledger projects and host new open source software, communities, standards, and specifications that are critical to the macro shift toward decentralized systems of distributed trust....

LF Decentralized Trust's expanded project and member ecosystem will be both essential to emerging tokenized assets classes and networks, as well as to modernizing the core infrastructure for finance, trade, government, healthcare, and more. LF Decentralized Trust will serve as a neutral home for the open development of a broad range of ledger, identity, security, interoperability, scale, implementation, and related technologies... LF Decentralized Trust will also include new directed funding models that will drive strategic investments by members into individual projects and project resources.

"With LF Decentralized Trust, we're expanding our commitment to open source innovation by embracing a wider array of decentralized technologies," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "This new, elevated foundation will enable the community to build a more robust ecosystem that drives forward transparency, security, and efficiency in global infrastructure."

"After eight years of advancing the development of blockchain, decentralized identity and related technologies via the Hyperledger community, the time has come to broaden our effort and impact," said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Blockchain and Identity, the Linux Foundation. "Ledgers and ledger technologies are but one component of the decentralized systems that will underpin a digital-first global economy. LF Decentralized Trust is where we will gather and grow an expanded community and portfolio of technologies to deliver the transparency, reliability, security and efficiency needed to successfully upgrade critical systems around the world."
The announcement includes quotes of support from numerous companies including Oracle, Siemens, Visa, Accenture, Citi, and Hitachi. Some highlights:

• "The formation of the LF Decentralized Trust reflects the growing demand for open source resources that are critical to the management and functionality of decentralized systems." — CEO of Digital Asset

• "The adoption of decentralized infrastructure is at an inflection point, reflecting the increasing demand from both enterprises and consumers for more secure and transparent digital transactions. As the industry leader for onchain data, blockchain abstraction, and interoperability, we're excited to see the formation of the LF Decentralized Trust and to expand our collaboration with leading financial institutions on advancing tokenized assets and the onchain economy at large." — CMO at Chainlink Labs.

• "As a founding member of the Hyperledger Foundation, and given our unique position in the financial markets, we recognize the vast potential for open-source innovation and decentralized technologies when it comes to reducing risk, increasing resiliency and improving security. The expansion of Hyperledger Foundation into LF Decentralized Trust represents an exciting opportunity to continue expanding these groundbreaking technologies." — a managing director at DTCC

Earlier this week, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange received a donation of 8.07 bitcoin (worth roughly $500,000) from an anonymous bitcoin whale, "helping to cover the cost of a private jet that flew him out of the U.K. and ultimately to freedom in Australia after he reached a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice," reports CoinDesk. From the report: Initially, Assange's wife Stella made an "emergency appeal" to raise 520,000 British pounds to pay for the transport, setting up a crowdfunding page that allowed people to donate in fiat currency via credit cards or bank transfer. With that site notably not allowing crypto for donations, the family quickly moved to set up another page to accept bitcoin.

Up to this point, the bitcoin address has received 34 donations totaling just over $500,000. The overwhelming majority, however, came from just that one 8.07 BTC donation. The original fiat site has also received about $500,000 in donations. "Julian's travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: Julian will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for charter Flight VJ199," Stella Assange wrote on X. "He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia. Any contribution big or small is much appreciated." The jet was organized by the Australian government after Assange reached a historic plea deal on Tuesday, where he pleaded guilty to espionage charges in exchange for his freedom.

A super PAC called Fairshake, funded primarily by top cryptocurrency companies, achieved several wins in congressional primaries and plans to spend over $100 million to support pro-crypto candidates in the general elections. CNBC reports: Fairshake and its two affiliated political action committees, one for Republicans, one for Democrats, quietly racked up half a dozen other wins Tuesday as the candidates they backed glided to victory, although none of the races were competitive. They included Rep. John Curtis, who won the Republican nomination for Utah's open Senate seat. Created last year as part of a joint effort between more than a dozen crypto firms, Fairshake PAC has emerged as one of the top-spending PACs in the 2024 election cycle. Fairshake and its two affiliated PACs have put more than $37 million so far into advertisements in primary races, according to AdImpact. Despite a broad mission to defend the entire $2.2 trillion crypto market, Fairshake is funded by a very small set of donors.

Of the $160 million in total contributions Fairshake has raised since it was founded, around $155 million -- or 94% -- can be traced back to just four companies: Ripple, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase and Jump Crypto. But it's not just money that the crypto industry plans to deploy this fall. The nonprofit Stand With Crypto says it has collected more than 1.1 million email addresses of crypto "advocates" it hopes to engage all the way to the ballot box. The strength of the crypto groups is getting noticed on Capitol Hill, especially among lawmakers who are facing tough elections in 2025, where a few thousand voters, or a hefty donation, could make a difference in not only a race but in which party controls each chamber. [...]

In the coming months, the group doesn't plan to spend on the presidential race, but rather the House and Senate, according to a Fairshake spokesperson. Both of those chambers are in play for 2025. Fairshake has yet to start spending in the general election cycle, but several officials in the industry said they are keeping an eye on states such as Ohio and Montana, where Democratic incumbents who are bearish on crypto face challengers who have embraced the technology. [...] Ads funded by Fairshake deliver messages that are typically less about a candidates' support for or opposition to crypto, and more about broader issues that resound with voters, such as fairness and integrity.

A Zillow listing for a $2.4 million house in a Dallas suburb is grabbing attention for its 5,786-square-foot data center with immersion cooling tanks, massive server racks, and two separate power grids. Tom's Hardware reports: With a brick exterior, cute paving, and mini-McMansion arch stylings, the building certainly looks to be a residential home for the archetypal Texas family. Prospective home-buyers will thus be disappointed by the 0 bedroom, 1 bathroom setup, which becomes a warehouse-feeling office from the first step inside where you are met with a glass-shielded reception desk in a white-brick corridor. The "Crypto Collective" branding betrays the former life of the unit, which served admirably as a crypto mining base.

The purchase of the "upgraded turnkey Tier 2 Data Center" will include all of its cooling and power infrastructure. Three Engineered Fluids "SLICTanks," single-phase liquid immersion cooling tanks for use with dielectric coolant, will come with pumps and a 500kW dry cooler. The tanks are currently filled with at least 80 mining computers visible from the photos, though the SLICTanks can be configured to fit more machines. Also visible in proximity to the cooling array is a deep row of classic server racks and a staggering amount of networking.

The listing advertises a host of potential uses for future customers, from "AI services, cloud hosting, traditional data center, servers or even Bitcoin Mining". Also packed into the 5,786 square feet of real estate is two separate power grids, 5 HVAC units, a hefty amount of four levels of warehouse-style storage aisles, a lounge/office space, and a fully-paved backyard. In other good news, its future corporate residents will not have an HOA to deal with, and will only be 20 minutes outside of the heart of Dallas, sitting just out of earshot of two major highways.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: New York Attorney General Letitia James has recovered $50 million from the cryptocurrency platform Gemini Trust to repay investors defrauded in its Gemini Earn program, she said on Friday. Gemini, run by billionaire twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, will provide full recoveries to more than 230,000 Earn investors, including 29,000 in New York, and agreed to a ban on operating crypto lending programs in the state. The payout is in addition to James' related $2 billion settlement, opens new tab with crypto lender Genesis Global Capital, which she announced on May 20.

"Gemini marketed its Earn program as a way for investors to grow their money, but actually lied and locked investors out of their accounts," James said. "Today's settlement will make defrauded investors whole." The funds will be accessible within seven days, Gemini told investors on Friday. "With this final distribution, Earn users will have received 100% of the assets owed to them," it said. [...] Investors are expected to recover more than they invested because they are being paid in digital assets such as bitcoin , whose value has more than tripled since redemptions were suspended.