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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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The largest campaign finance violation in US history

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Earlier this month, some of the richest men in Silicon Valley, led by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz (the billionaire VCs behind Andreesen-Horowitz) announced that they would be backing Trump with endorsements and millions of dollars:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/07/16/trump-lands-more-big-tech-backers-billionaire-venture-capitalist-andreessen-joins-wave-supporting-former-president/

Predictably, this drew a lot of ire, which Andreesen tried to diffuse by insisting that his support "doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations

In other words, the billionaires backing Trump weren't doing so because they supported the racism, the national abortion ban, the attacks on core human rights, etc. Those were merely tradeoffs that they were willing to make to get the parts of the Trump program they do support: more tax-cuts for the ultra-rich, and, of course, free rein to defraud normies with cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Crypto isn't "money" – it is far too volatile to be a store of value, a unit of account, or a medium of exchange. You'd have to be nuts to get a crypto mortgage when all it takes is Elon Musk tweeting a couple emoji to make your monthly mortgage payment double.

A thing becomes moneylike when it can be used to pay off a bill for something you either must pay for, or strongly desire to pay for. The US dollar's moneylike property comes from the fact that hundreds of millions of people need dollars to pay off the IRS and their state tax bills, which means that they will trade labor and goods for dollars. Even people who don't pay US taxes will accept dollars, because they know they can use them to buy things from people who do have a nondiscretionary bill that can only be paid in dollars.

Dollars are also valuable because there are many important commodities that can only – or primarily – be purchased with them, like much of the world's oil supply. The fact that anyone who wants to buy oil has a strong need for dollars makes dollars valuable, because they will sell labor and goods to get dollars, not because they need dollars, but because they need oil.

There's almost nothing that can only be purchased with crypto. You can procure illegal goods and services in the mistaken belief that this transaction will be durably anonymous, and you can pay off ransomware creeps who have hijacked your personal files or all of your business's data:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Web3 was sold as a way to make the web more "decentralized," but it's best understood as an effort to make it impossible to use the web without paying crypto every time you click your mouse. If people need crypto to use the internet, then crypto whales will finally have a source of durable liquidity for the tokens they've hoarded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/16/nondiscretionary-liabilities/#quatloos

The Web3 bubble was almost entirely down to the vast hype machine mobilized by Andreesen-Horowitz, who bet billions of dollars on the idea and almost single-handedly created the illusion of demand for crypto. For example, they arranged a $100m bribe to Kickstarter shareholders in exchange for Kickstarter pretending to integrate "blockchain" into its crowdfunding platform:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/untold-story-kickstarter-crypto-hail-120000205.html

Kickstarter never ended up using the blockchain technology, because it was useless. Their shareholders just pocketed the $100m while the company weathered the waves of scorn from savvy tech users who understood that this was all a shuck.

Look hard enough at any crypto "success" and you'll discover a comparable scam. Remember NFTs, and the eye-popping sums that seemingly "everyone" was willing to pay for ugly JPEGs? That whole market was shot through with "wash-trading" – where you sell your asset to yourself and pretend that it was bought by a third party. It's a cheap – and illegal – way to convince people that something worthless is actually very valuable:

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Even the books about crypto are scams. Chris Dixon's "bestseller" about the power of crypto, Read Write Own, got on the bestseller list through the publishing equivalent of wash-trading, where VCs with large investments in crypto bought up thousands of copies and shoved them on indifferent employees or just warehoused them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

The fact that crypto trades were mostly the same bunch of grifters buying shitcoins from each other, while spending big on Superbowl ads, bribes to Kickstarter shareholders, and bulk-buys of mediocre business-books was bound to come out someday. In the meantime, though, the system worked: it convinced normies to gamble their life's savings on crypto, which they promptly lost (if you can't spot the sucker at the table, you're the sucker).

There's a name for this: it's called a "bezzle." John Kenneth Galbraith defined a "bezzle" as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." All bezzles collapse eventually, but until they do, everyone feels better off. You think you're rich because you just bought a bunch of shitcoins after Matt Damon told you that "fortune favors the brave." Damon feels rich because he got a ton of cash to rope you into the con. Crypto.com feels rich because you took a bunch of your perfectly cromulent "fiat money" that can be used to buy anything and traded it in for shitcoins that can be used to buy nothing:

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/matt-damon-crypto-commercial/

Andreesen-Horowitz were masters of the bezzle. For them, the Web3 bet on an internet that you'd have to buy their shitcoins to use was always Plan B. Plan A was much more straightforward: they would back crypto companies and take part of their equity in huge quantities of shitcoins that they could sell to "unqualified investors" (normies) in an "initial coin offering." Normally, this would be illegal: a company can't offer stock to the general public until it's been through an SEC vetting process and "gone public" through an IPO. But (Andreesen-Horowitz argued) their companies' "initial coin offerings" existed in an unregulated grey zone where they could be traded for the life's savings of mom-and-pop investors who thought crypto was real because they heard that Kickstarter had adopted it, and there was a bestselling book about it, and Larry David and Matt Damon and Spike Lee told them it was the next big thing.

Crypto isn't so much a financial innovation as it is a financial obfuscation. "Fintech" is just a cynical synonym for "unregulated bank." Cryptocurrency enjoys a "byzantine premium" – that is, it's so larded with baffling technical nonsense that no one understands how it works, and they assume that anything they don't understand is probably incredibly sophisticated and great ("a pile of shit this big must have pony under it somewhere"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

There are two threats to the crypto bezzle: the first is that normies will wise up to the scam, and the second is that the government will put a stop to it. These are correlated risks: if the government treats crypto as a security (or worse, a scam), that will put severe limits on how shitcoins can be marketed to normies, which will staunch the influx of real money, so the sole liquidity will come from ransomware payments and transactions with tragically overconfident hitmen and drug dealers who think the blockchain is anonymous.

To keep the bezzle going, crypto scammers have spent the past two election cycles flooding both parties with cash. In the 2022 midterms, crypto money bankrolled primary challenges to Democrats by absolute cranks, like the "effective altruist" Carrick Flynn ("effective altruism" is a crypto-affiliated cult closely associated with the infamous scam-artist Sam Bankman-Fried). Sam Bankman-Fried's super PAC, "Protect Our Future," spent $10m on attack-ads against Flynn's primary opponent, the incumbent Andrea Salinas. Salinas trounced Flynn – who was an objectively very bad candidate who stood no chance of winning the general election – but only at the expense of most of the funds she raised from her grassroots, small-dollar donors.

Fighting off SBF's joke candidate meant that Salinas went into the general election with nearly empty coffers, and she barely squeaked out a win against a GOP nightmare candidate Mike Erickson – a millionaire Oxy trafficker, drunk driver, and philanderer who tricked his then-girlfriend by driving her to a fake abortion clinic and telling her that it was a real one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/14/competitors-critics-customers/#billionaire-dilletantes

SBF is in prison, but there's no shortage of crypto millions for this election cycle. According to Molly White's "Follow the Crypto" tracker, crypto-affiliated PACs have raised $185m to influence the 2024 election – more than the entire energy sector:

https://www.followthecrypto.org/

As with everything "crypto," the cryptocurrency election corruption slushfund is a bezzle. The "Stand With Crypto PAC" claims to have the backing of 1.3 million "crypto advocates," and Reuters claims they have 440,000 backers. But 99% of the money claimed by Stand With Crypto was actually donated to "Fairshake" – a different PAC – and 90% of Fairshake's money comes from a handful of corporate donors:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/

Stand With Crypto – minus the Fairshake money it falsely claimed – has raised $13,690 since April. That money came from just seven donors, four of whom are employed by Coinbase, for whom Stand With Crypto is a stalking horse. Stand With Crypto has an affiliated group (also called "Stand With Crypto" because that is an extremely normal and forthright way to run a nonprofit!), which has raised millions – $1.49m. Of that $1.49m, 90% came from just four donors: three cryptocurrency companies, and the CEO of Coinbase.

There are plenty of crypto dollars for politicians to fight over, but there are virtually no crypto voters. 69-75% of Americans "view crypto negatively or distrust it":

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/

When Trump keynotes the Bitcoin 2024 conference and promises to use public funds to buy $1b worth of cryptocoins, he isn't wooing voters, he's wooing dollars:

https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-strategic-bitcoin-stockpile-bitcoin-2024/

Wooing dollars, not crypto. Politicians aren't raising funds in crypto, because you can't buy ads or pay campaign staff with shitcoins. Remember: unless Andreesen-Horowitz manages to install Web3 crypto tollbooths all over the internet, the industries that accept crypto are ransomware, and technologically overconfident hit-men and drug-dealers. To win elections, you need dollars, which crypto hustlers get by convincing normies to give them real money in exchange for shitcoins, and they are only funding politicians who will make it easier to do that.

As a political matter, "crypto" is a shorthand for "allowing scammers to steal from working people," which makes it a very Republican issue. As Hamilton Nolan writes, "If the Republicans want to position themselves as the Party of Crypto, let them. It is similar to how they position themselves as The Party of Racism and the Party of Religious Zealots and the Party of Telling Lies about Election Fraud. These things actually reflect poorly on them, the Republicans":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/crypto-as-a-political-characteristic

But the Democrats – who are riding high on the news that Kamala Harris will be their candidate this fall – have decided that they want some of that crypto money, too. Even as crypto-skeptical Dems like Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester see millions from crypto PACs flooding in to support their primary challengers and GOP opponents, a group of Dem politicians are promising to give the crypto industry whatever it wants, if they will only bribe Democratic candidates as well:

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/f/?id=00000190-f475-d94b-a79f-fc77c9400000

Kamala Harris – a genuinely popular candidate who has raised record-shattering sums from small-dollar donors representing millions of Americans – herself has called for a "reset" of the relationship between the crypto sector and the Dems:

https://archive.is/iYd1C

As Luke Goldstein writes in The American Prospect, sucking up to crypto scammers so they stop giving your opponents millions of dollars to run attack ads against you is a strategy with no end – you have to keep sucking up to the scam, otherwise the attack ads come out:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-31-crypto-cash-affecting-democratic-races/

There's a whole menagerie of crypto billionaires behind this year's attempt to buy the American government – Andreesen and Horowitz, of course, but also the Winklevoss twins, and this guy, who says we're in the midst of a "civil war" and "anyone that votes against Trump can die in a fucking fire":

https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1813952816840597712/photo/1

But the real whale that's backstopping the crypto campaign spending is Coinbase, through its Fairshake crypto PAC. Coinbase has donated $45,500,000 to Fairshake, which is a lot:

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-to-get-regulatory-clarity-for-crypto

But $45.5m isn't merely a large campaign contribution: it appears that $25m of that is the largest the largest illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor in history, "by far," a fact that was sleuthed out by Molly White:

https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

At issue is the fact that Coinbase is bidding to be a US federal contractor: specifically, they want to manage the crypto wallets that US federal cops keep seizing from crime kingpins. Once Coinbase threw its hat into the federal contracting ring, it disqualified itself from donating to politicians or funding PACs:

Campaign finance law prohibits federal government contractors from making contributions, or promising to make contributions, to political entities including super PACs like Fairshake.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/federal-government-contractors/

Previous to this, the largest ever illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor appears to be Marathon Petroleum Company's 2022 bribe to GOP House and Senate super PACs, a mere $1m, only 4% of Coinbase's bribe.

I'm with Nolan on this one. Let the GOP chase millions from billionaires everyone hates who expect them to promote a scam that everyone mistrusts. The Dems have finally found a candidate that people are excited about, and they're awash in money thanks to small amounts contributed by everyday Americans. As AOC put it:

They've got money, but we've got people. Dollar bills don't vote. People vote.

https://www.popsugar.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dnc-headquarters-climate-speech-47986992

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/31/greater-fools/#coinbased

#pluralistic #coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #elections #campaign finance #campaign finance violations #crimes #fraud #influence peddling #democrats #moneylike #bubbles #ponzi schemes #bezzles #molly white #hamilton nolan

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theambitiouswoman · 1 year ago

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Wealth Building: Money Topics You Should Learn About If You Want To Make More Money

Budgeting: This means keeping track of how much money you have and how you spend it. It helps you save money and plan for your needs.

Investing: This is like putting your money to work so it can grow over time. It's like planting seeds to grow a money tree.

Saving: Saving is when you put some money aside for later. It's like keeping some of your treats for another day.

Debt Management: This is about handling money you owe to others, like loans or credit cards. You want to pay it back without owing too much.

Credit Scores: Think of this like a report card for your money habits. It helps others decide if they can trust you with money.

Taxation: Taxes are like a fee you pay to the government. You need to understand how they work and how to pay them correctly.

Retirement Planning: This is making sure you have enough money to live comfortably when you're older and no longer working.

Estate Planning: This is like making a plan for your stuff and money after you're no longer here.

Insurance: It's like paying for protection. You give some money to an insurance company, and they help you if something bad happens.

Investment Options: These are different ways to make your money grow, like buying parts of companies or putting money in a savings account.

Financial Markets: These are places where people buy and sell things like stocks and bonds. It can affect your investments.

Risk Management: This is about being careful with your money and making smart choices to avoid losing it.

Passive Income: This is money you get without having to work for it, like rent from a property you own.

Entrepreneurship: It's like starting your own business. You create something and try to make money from it.

Behavioral Finance: This is about understanding how your feelings and thoughts can affect how you use money. You want to make good choices even when you feel worried or excited.

Financial Goals: These are like wishes for your money. You need a plan to make them come true.

Financial Tools and Apps: These are like helpers on your phone or computer that can make it easier to manage your money.

Real Estate: This is about buying and owning property, like a house or land, to make money.

Asset Protection: It's about keeping your money safe from problems or people who want to take it.

Philanthropy: This means giving money to help others, like donating to charities or causes you care about.

Compounding Interest: This is like a money snowball. When you save or invest your money, it can grow over time. As it grows, you earn even more money on the money you already earned.

Credit Cards: When you borrow money or use a credit card to buy things, you need to show you can pay it back on time. This helps you build a good reputation with money. The better your reputation, the easier it is to borrow more money when you need it.

Alternate Currencies: These are like different kinds of money that aren't like the coins and bills you're used to like Crypto. It's digital money that's not controlled by a government. Some people use it for online shopping, and others think of it as a way to invest, like buying special tokens for a game.

#money #finance #financial planning #investing #entrepreneur #wealth #success #make money online

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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On a dead-end road that climbs out of the tiny city of Jenkins, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Kentucky, there stands a large warehouse with a mint green roof. It shares the road with a few other businesses, but is otherwise surrounded by an expanse of open fields and tree-lined slopes. Inside, the warehouse is stacked high with racks on racks of computers—thousands of them. But none have ever been switched on.

The warehouse is owned by Mohawk Energy, a company cofounded by Kentucky state senator Brandon Smith in 2005, originally to resculpt landscapes disfigured by coal mining. After lying dormant for a period, Mohawk was reincarnated in 2022 when Smith struck a deal with HBTPower, a company then owned by Chinese crypto exchange Huobi, which wanted to use the warehouse for a bitcoin mining operation.

Under the deal, Mohawk promised to fit up its warehouse with the necessary power infrastructure, operate the equipment, and funnel any bitcoin produced to HBT. In return, HBT would pay Mohawk a monthly hosting fee, a cut of its mining revenue, and the associated energy bills.

Smith says he hoped the arrangement would generate tax revenue and create jobs for former coal miners, who could be trained as repair technicians. The coal industry departed Jenkins long ago, the reserves depleted, leaving people in search of work. More than a third now live below the poverty line, per the latest census data. “I liked the idea of going from one type of mining to a new type,” says Smith. “I thought, now in Eastern Kentucky we are going to have our time—we’re going to catch up and play a part in the tech future.”

But after a promising start, the relationship between Mohawk and HBT soured and then fell apart. “Nothing has ever been turned on. It’s a fascinating, almost Willy Wonka–type atmosphere when you walk through,” says Smith. “It has turned into a disaster.”

In November 2023, HBT brought a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Mohawk had breached its contract on several fronts, including by failing to install the appropriate power infrastructure and secure certain power subsidies, and attempting to sell off the mining equipment. “Ultimately, the source of the current dispute is Mohawk’s basic failure to comply with its obligations, not only in a timely way, but at all in many regards,” says Harout Samra, a specialist in international dispute resolution at law firm DLA Piper and representative for HBT.

Mohawk sued HBT in return, contesting the various alleged breaches and claiming that HBT is delinquent on more than $700,000 in rent, labor, and fit-up costs. The company is also seeking damages relating to the loss of income over the term of the contract and the inability to bring a new tenant into the facility while the equipment remains on-site. “Huobi simply made a bargain it believes now is a bad one, and wants to get out of it without paying the funds it owes,” the filing states.

The legal conflict, which remains unresolved, is just one in a series of fights between Chinese companies and the owners of industrial facilities in the rural US over failed bitcoin mining partnerships. What looked to facility owners in Kentucky like an irresistible opportunity to tap into a new line of business in an otherwise fallow period has turned into a nightmare. They claim to have been saddled with unpaid hosting fees and energy bills worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with few options for recovering the money. The Chinese parties have been left equally displeased. “HBTPower obviously regrets that this opportunity has ultimately played out the way it has,” says Samra.

The bitcoin mining game—a race between computers to win the right to process a bundle of transactions and claim a crypto reward—is dominated by large corporations that own and operate industrial-scale facilities. But in 2021 and 2022, smaller-scale operations began to proliferate in the US countryside wherever there was available power, including in Kentucky. “A lot of mom-and-pop shops opened up,” says Phil Harvey, CEO at Sabre56, a firm that consults on crypto mining projects and operates its own facilities. “Appalachia has always been a good source of power.”

These small facilities were plugging a gap in the market. A ban on crypto mining in China had left businesses casting about for a new home for their many millions of dollars’ worth of mining equipment. “A lot of wealthy Chinese businesses were affected,” says Harvey. “Every minute these machines are down, they are losing revenue.” Meanwhile, as the price of bitcoin ballooned—and the profitability of mining along with it—mining firms and investor groups began to hoard large quantities of bitcoin mining equipment of their own, says Harvey, without considering where they might deploy it.

In an overheated market, holders of mining equipment jumped into hosting arrangements at short notice with owners of small facilities, some of whom had no prior experience and insufficient expertise, who agreed to install the equipment and run the mining operations on their behalf.

But the haste with which these hosting relationships came together, in the name of striking while bitcoin was hot, says Harvey, set many of the partnerships up for failure. There was limited due diligence conducted by parties on both sides, delays in kitting out facilities and deploying equipment, and disputes over payment terms, he says, among other points of friction. “It's a snowball effect where everyone just ends up getting pissed off with each other,” says Harvey.

Though the American market proved more expensive and bureaucratic than some Chinese businesses expected, says Harvey, problems were also caused by the hubris of facility owners, some of whom found themselves in over their heads. “It’s no joke running a [bitcoin mining] operation of any kind of scale,” he says. “Just because the Chinese are tough to do business with, doesn’t mean they are the ones in the wrong. I would say that blame is equally shared.”

The law firm acting for Mohawk in its dispute with HBT, Anna Whites Law Office, has represented multiple owners of small facilities in Kentucky in similar legal conflicts with Chinese partners. The cases differ from the Mohawk situation, says attorney Anna Whites, founder of the firm, but share a common thread: “We saw a pattern that [companies with ties to China] would ship in machines with uncertain provenance, mine very heavily for three months, then run without paying the bill,” she claims.

Some of the cases settled out of court; Whites is unable to supply the details for reasons of client confidentiality. But others continue to drag on.

Biofuel Mining, a company formerly co-owned by Smith, is involved in legal tangles with two companies that Whites believes to be run out of China: Touzi Tech and VCV Power Gamma. Although both are incorporated in Delaware, per SEC filings, they conduct business in Mandarin and cannot be reached at their listed US addresses, Whites claims. “It's pretty standard for the foreign entities from any country to get a short-term office so that they have less scrutiny from US investors and government agencies,” she says.

In both cases, Biofuel claims, the firms shipped equipment from China to its hosting facility in Eastern Kentucky, then walked away with the bitcoin produced, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid energy bills and hosting fees.

Biofuel reached a settlement with Touzi in early 2022 for $60,000, but despite having handed back the mining equipment, it claims not to have received the sum it is owed under the agreement.

In the still-unresolved spat with VCV, Biofuel received permission from the Martin County Circuit Court in Kentucky to sell off the mining equipment, claims Whites, to recoup a portion of the funds it is owed (she has not confirmed the amount), but she alleges that no damages have yet been awarded. VCV has stopped responding to communications, she claims.

Biofuel has since dissolved, put out of business by the failed hosting ventures. “I literally lost my house—I lost everything. It financially ruined me,” says Wes Hamilton, former Biofuel Mining CEO. “I’m just so frustrated about the whole thing.”

WIRED contacted VCV and Touzi for comment, but did not receive any response.

There are few financial recovery options for companies like Mohawk and Biofuel. The situation is made more difficult, as in the Mohawk case, if they are dealing with so-called special purpose entities. Because they are set up by their parent companies for a single specific business venture, these entities need not be concerned about their long-term ability to operate in the US.

“It certainly can be more difficult to recover damages from a non-US counterparty,” says Kim Havlin, a partner in the global commercial litigation practice at law firm White & Case. “There is certainly a risk that an entity that doesn’t need to be in the US may just ignore the case.”

Even if the Kentucky facility owners win out in court, it could be difficult to collect any damages awarded. “A judgment is essentially a piece of paper. Any judgment needs to be turned into assets or cash in order to be valuable,” says Havlin. If the opposing party refuses to pay up and has no US assets to collect against, sometimes that isn’t possible.

Almost a year after the dispute began, the Mohawk case is stuck in legal limbo. In a setback for Mohawk, the presiding judge recently denied its motion to dismiss HBT’s complaint, on the basis that it had failed to sufficiently back up its argument. The judge also pushed Mohawk’s countersuit into arbitration, a forum for resolving disputes privately instead of in open court. Non-US parties tend to prefer arbitration as a way to “remove a home forum from both sides,” explains Havlin. “You can pick an arbitral seat in neither country as a means of creating a neutral playing field.” A parallel federal court hearing is set for December to consider whether an injunction should be imposed on Mohawk, preventing it from selling off the remaining HBT equipment in its possession.

Smith has given up on the idea of recovering the full amount he claims to be owed. “We’re at the point that it’s almost silly to even be arguing about breaking even,” he says.

In an interview with PBS that aired in September 2023, touting the Mohawk Energy facility, Smith said he hoped to prove that not every business that blew into Jenkins would abandon the area. “I’ve stood at their ribbon cuttings, then watched them leave. I’d like to do something to let people know that not everybody is like that,” he said.

After the relationship with HBT collapsed last year, Smith faces the prospect of Mohawk becoming yet another false start. With the facility inactive, the company has been forced to dismiss the former coal miners brought on as technicians. (It is unclear how many people it employed.)

The Mohawk facility was perhaps never set to revitalize Jenkins in the way Smith hoped, anyway. “I would say that a rural community benefits very little from a bitcoin mining facility. In terms of job creation, it’s minimal in a lot of cases,” says Harvey, the consultant. “It's certainly not the savior to a dwindling community.”

Nonetheless, Smith remains hopeful of salvaging the crypto mining project, with a new partner. “I’m hoping that this gets settled in the way that it should and that somebody comes forward and lets us go through with the vision that we wanted for this region,” he says. “I hope every day that maybe some big company will see that there's a place ready to go in this part of the country.”

Otherwise, Mohawk’s dalliance with bitcoin mining will become a cautionary tale. “It was very hurtful to see these families lose their income. We were one of the biggest payrolls in Jenkins,” says Smith. “It adds insult to injury that I’m sitting here arguing in court.”

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keep-both-eyes-on-trump · 1 month ago

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Trump Watch #9

Trump has named the following:

Linda McMahon as secretary of education.

McMahon is a wrestling billionaire and co-founder of WWE.

She has long been a supporter of Trump and served in his first administration as leader of the Small Business Administration.

She has served on the Connecticut Board of Education and the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.

She supports charter schools and school choice.

Scott Bessent for treasury secretary.

Bessent is a billionaire who advised Trump on economic policy during his campaign; he has experience founding and working for hedge funds.

If confirmed he will be the first LGBTQ+ Senate-confirmed cabinet member in a republican administration.

He supports extending Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation.

He also supports Trump’s embrace of the crypto industry.

Russell Vought for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Vought held the same position during Trump’s first term.

He is a key architect from Project 2025 writing the chapter on the Executive Office within which he takes aim at federal regulatory agencies that are not under control of the White House..

He is a strong advocate for recess appointments of Trump’s nominees.

Lori Chavez-Deremer as labor secretary.

Chavez-Deremer was the first Latina congresswoman of Oregon; she lost re-election in November.

She co-sponsored the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would make it easier for workers to unionize.

She has strong support from unions.

Pam Bondi as attorney general.

Bondi is the Florida attorney general and is the first woman to hold the position.

As FL state attorney general she brought cases against the Affordable Care Act and fought to maintain FL’s ban on same-sex marriage.

She is a longtime ally of Trump, served as a chairwomen of America First Policy Institute, and defended Trump during his first impeachment trial.

She received a $25,000 donation from Trump’s charitable foundation and subsequently her office dropped a suit against Trump’s company for fraud stating there were insufficient grounds to proceed. A prosecutor assigned by then-Gov. Rick Scott determined there was insufficient evidence to support bribery charges.

Brook Rollins as secretary of agriculture

Rollins is a co-founder and president of think tank America First Policy and served as assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives during Trump’s first administration.

She is a lawyer with an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University in agricultural development.

Dr Marty Makary as Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

Makary is a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University.

He supports RFK Jr. as Trump’s pick for HHS.

He worked with the first Trump administration on transparent billing in health care.

He opposed COVID vaccine mandates and was a critic of public health measures during the pandemic.

Dr Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon General.

Nesheiwat is a physician, medical director at CityMD, and former Fox News medical contributor.

She is a supporter of vaccines.

Dave Weldon to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Weldon is a physician, Army veteran, and former Republican Florida representative.

As a congressman he introduced the Weldon Amendment which provides protections for health care workers and organizations that do not provide or aid in abortions.

Scott Turner for secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Turner previously served in the Texas House of Representatives; he is a NFL veteran and motivational speaker.

He led the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term and currently works as chair of the Center for Education Opportunity at America First Policy Institute.

Republicans also announced plan to create a GOP-controlled subcommittee, Delivering on Government Efficiency, to work with the Department of Government Efficiency on cutting government waste; the committee is to be chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

#democrat #democratic party #republican #republican party #donald trump #trump #us politics #politics #democracy #liberals #conservatives #department of government efficiency

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dbunicorn · 8 months ago

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Dying alone and lonely dying: Media discourse and pandemic conditions - PMC

Holy shit. I'm.still WRONG 4 years later mom. Watching you suffer over the last 2 years while a bunch of geriatric rich dumb fucks and their moronic followers with phone addictions feed their egos actually didn't happen.

I was WRONG mom, you were WRONG mom, were just fucking horrible people. You should never ask for help after paying taxes, helping your community. But a bunch of dumb bitches get it. We're WRONG but they get it

It must be my bias against racists, misogynists, fiscal fuckery, unfunded liabilities and drinking bleach. Edgy! Stalking too. Ooops

Holy shit the system is broken globally because of mass incompetence. Who fucking knew????

Clearly our debt is because I'm WRONG, young women commiting suicide because I want you to starve yourself and inject plastic into your tits and ass, WRONG

The fucking debt and your mental illness not understanding you might fucking need a functioning military. How fucking infinitely ignorant, childish, stupid and fucking WRONG.

Who the fuck is it you thinks protects you? A 5 ft1 vegan, who has an only fans account? A 70 year old senator who can't STFU about crypto? But makes regulatory capture obscene? Where the fuck were you in 2009? And every bailout since? These ideas were born out of the personal failings, greed, wealth theft of politicians, elites, gamblers, men. Tracking every dollar because it's a bill for your children to be paid? Of course not

How fucking stupid are you? The debt, the fucking debt, the sweeping, wasteful spending.

Explain to me the infinite mind destroying fuckery of pandering to the base of immigrants while setting up protectionist policies? Utterly asinine

You get to be a principled pacifist because someone protects you. Otherwise it's martyrdom.

It's a constant negotiation.

#covid 19 #long covid #useless

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unpluggedfinancial · 8 months ago

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The Rise of Bitcoin Acceptance: A New Era in Financial Innovation

Introduction

Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency, has transformed the financial landscape since its inception in 2009. Its journey from an obscure digital asset to a mainstream financial instrument is nothing short of remarkable. This blog post explores the growing acceptance of Bitcoin, highlighting key legislative developments and significant holdings, including those by the U.S. government.

Oklahoma’s Landmark Bitcoin Bill

Oklahoma has made a landmark move by passing a bill to protect Bitcoin rights. Governor Kevin Stitt signed the bill into law on May 13, 2024. Championed by Representative Samuel Brian Hill and Senator Coleman, the legislation establishes key protections for Bitcoin and digital asset holders. Effective November 1, 2024, it ensures fundamental rights for individuals and businesses engaged in digital asset activities, positioning Oklahoma as a leader in the digital economy.

Dennis Porter, CEO and co-founder of the Satoshi Action Fund, highlighted the importance of state-level initiatives, stating, “Americans should wake up to the incredible political opportunity that is available at the state level. Throughout history, multiple movements and industries have utilized the states to deliver powerful victories for their cause. Now, Satoshi Action is poised to put the Bitcoin and digital asset ecosystem onto the same trajectory.”

Key Provisions of the Bill

The bill guarantees the right to self-custody, allowing individuals to securely hold their digital assets. It permits using Bitcoin and other digital currencies for transactions without additional taxes, aligning digital assets with traditional legal tender regarding tax treatment. This aims to streamline the use of cryptocurrencies in everyday transactions and foster a more inclusive financial environment.

Bitcoin Mining Protections

The bill supports Bitcoin mining by protecting the right to mine Bitcoin at home and through commercial operations. Oklahoma hopes to attract more blockchain businesses and investments by ensuring legal clarity and stability. The legislation prevents local governments from imposing restrictive measures specifically targeting mining activities, such as additional noise ordinances, while still adhering to general noise regulations.

Porter emphasized Oklahoma's stance: “Oklahoma has now placed its flag in the ground to show the world that they will protect the right for Bitcoiners to access the technology.”

The bill also stipulates that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission cannot create discriminatory rate schedules for mining companies, ensuring fair utility rates and encouraging sustainable and economically viable mining practices.

Advocacy and Future Impact

Dennis Porter and the Satoshi Action Fund were instrumental in advocating for the bill. They emphasize the importance of self-custody and the right to mine, arguing that these rights are fundamental to financial sovereignty and innovation. The Oklahoma Bitcoin Association, led by Storm Rund, was crucial in passing the bill, with significant contributions from Eric Peterson, Policy Director at Satoshi Action Fund.

When the bill takes effect on November 1, 2024, it sets a precedent for other states. Oklahoma positions itself at the forefront of the digital financial revolution by ensuring legal certainty. This legislation aims to attract blockchain businesses, drive innovation, and create economic opportunities, especially in rural areas. Oklahoma's proactive approach will likely inspire similar measures nationwide, solidifying its role as a leader in digital asset regulation.

U.S. Senate’s Resolution on SEC Crypto Rule

In a significant move on the federal level, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution on May 16, 2024, calling for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to strike down a rule affecting financial institutions dealing with crypto firms. The resolution nullifies the SEC’s Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121, which required banks to keep customers’ digital assets on their balance sheets, with capital maintained against them. This rule had been widely criticized for stifling innovation.

“The tally, a stunning 60 ‘Yeas’ in the Senate vote, sends a strong signal that both houses of Congress, across the political divide, clearly disapprove of this rule,” said the crypto advocacy group Blockchain Association.

Despite President Joe Biden's stated intention to veto the resolution to "protect investors in crypto-asset markets and to safeguard the broader financial system," the strong bipartisan support reflects growing political awareness and support for the crypto industry.

Conclusion

The recent legislative developments in Oklahoma and the U.S. Senate's resolution mark significant milestones in Bitcoin's journey towards broader acceptance and regulatory clarity. As Oklahoma leads with protective measures for Bitcoin rights and mining, and as federal lawmakers push back against restrictive SEC rules, the future looks promising for the integration and growth of digital assets in the mainstream economy. These steps not only encourage innovation and investment but also set a precedent for other states and countries to follow in embracing the digital financial revolution.

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reddragdiva · 2 years ago

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by Amy Castor and David Gerard

* Bittrex comes up with a scheme to pay themselves and stiff the government

* Binance loses its big US market makers and suffers a surfeit of regulatory clarity

* Bitcoin adds NFTs and promptly breaks

* The IRS sends the FTX bankruptcy estate a claim for forty-four billion dollars in unpaid taxes

* Sam Bankman-Fried: child genius, adult moron

* RFK Jr. brings the gibbering insane Twitter blue check conspiracy theorist constituency

#attack of the 50 foot blockchain

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 1 year ago

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Brazil Approves New Income Tax Rules, Imposing 15% Tax on Crypto Held on Foreign Exchanges

The Brazilian Senate has approved new income tax regulations that may necessitate Brazilians to pay a maximum of 15% tax on earnings obtained from cryptocurrencies held on foreign exchanges. The bill, which has already received approval from the Chamber of Deputies, is anticipated to be sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as the income tax modifications were initiated by his administration.

Commencing from January 1, 2024, individuals in Brazil earning more than $1,200 (6,000 Brazilian reals) from foreign-based exchanges will be subject to this tax. The tax rate for funds held on international exchanges will be equivalent to that applied to domestically held funds. However, earnings from funds accessed prior to December 31, 2023, will be taxed at 8%, while those accessed afterward will face the full 15% rate.

The legislation also impacts "exclusive funds," referring to investment funds with a sole shareholder, as well as foreign companies operating within Brazil's financial market. The government has set a revenue target of $4 billion (20.3 billion Brazilian reals) for these taxes in 2024.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #economy #cryptocurrency #taxation #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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daydream-reblog · 4 months ago

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Mabel: Gyatt skibidi toilet ohio rizz mewing amogus mogpilled looksmaxxer alpha sigma male chad fanum tax edging NFT crypto doge yas queen slay Dipper: Ok I'm summoning Bill Cipher and destroying humanity with him.

Dipper, Dipper look at my sweater. Dipper look at it look at my sweater Dipper look-

#i don't know why this was my first thought for this image

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arfacapital · 12 days ago

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Global Market Highlights: December 18, 2024

APAC markets

Asian markets traded with mixed sentiment, as a cautious tone followed Wall Street's subdued performance. Key factors include the focus on the FOMC announcement and Chair Powell's press conference later today. - ASX 200: Flat performance, with gains in Real Estate, Tech, and Healthcare offset by losses in Financials. - Nikkei 225: Held in narrow ranges ahead of Thursday's BoJ decision, with Nissan surging 22% on merger talks with Honda, whose shares dropped 3%. - Hang Seng & Shanghai Composite: Outperformed despite limited newsflow, bolstered by optimism ahead of China's PBoC rate decision on Friday.

US pre-market

US stocks experienced risk aversion on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones underperforming compared to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Sectors leading losses included Industrials, Energy, and Financials, while Consumer Staples and Healthcare provided relative support.

Fixed income markets

US Treasuries: Treasury yields saw muted action ahead of the FOMC meeting: - 10-Year Yield: Closed marginally higher, with the benchmark 20-year bond auction seeing weaker demand compared to averages: - Bid-to-Cover Ratio: 2.50x (vs. 2.57x average). - High Yield: 4.686% (vs. 4.671% expected). German Bunds: Bund futures remained subdued, trading below 135.00, awaiting further economic and geopolitical developments.

Commodities

- Oil: Crude oil prices dropped, weighed by broader risk-off sentiment. Inventory data showed a larger-than-expected draw - Private Crude Inventories: -4.7M barrels (vs. -1.6M expected). - Gold: Gold traded flat around $2,650/oz, as markets held steady ahead of the FOMC's decision. - Copper: Copper prices slipped below $9,000/ton, reflecting cautious market sentiment.

Currencies

USD Performance: The US Dollar posted marginal gains, largely unaffected by the retail sales data, as markets awaited the FOMC's interest rate decision and updated projections. Key Movers: - Safe-haven currencies: JPY and CHF strengthened due to the broader risk-off sentiment. - Antipodeans (AUD, CAD, NZD): Declined on weak risk appetite, with the CAD also influenced by cooler Canadian CPI. - EUR: Weakened following mixed German economic data, particularly softer Ifo Business Climate and Expectations indices.

Crypto

Bitcoin saw significant losses overnight, falling below $104,000 despite no major headlines.

Fixed Income Markets

- US 10-Year Treasuries: Traded sideways ahead of the Fed's decision. - German Bunds: Held below 135.00, showing minimal movement in anticipation of economic updates.

Economic Highlights

- Federal Reserve Decision: The Federal Reserve is expected to announce a 0.25% rate cut today, bringing rates to 4.3%, while signaling fewer cuts in 2025 due to persistent inflation above the 2% target. Source: AP. - Mortgage Applications Decline: Mortgage applications dropped 0.7% last week as 30-year fixed rates rose to 6.75%. Refinancing demand decreased by 3%, though purchase applications rose 1%, up 6% YoY, fueled by increased inventory and economic optimism. Source: CNBC. - U.K. Inflation Rises: U.K. inflation increased to 2.6% in November, in line with forecasts, driven by higher energy costs and wage growth. Core inflation reached 3.5%, slightly below estimates. Source: CNBC. - Brazil Tax Reform:Brazil's Congress is advancing on tax and fiscal reform votes this week. - US Congress: Congressional leaders struck a bipartisan agreement to extend the government funding deadline to March 14, 2025, while allocating over $100 billion for emergency disaster aid.

World News & Politics

- Stopgap Government Funding Bill: Congress proposed a temporary funding bill extending through March 14, allocating $100.4 billion for disaster relief and $10 billion for farmers. Source: AP. - Ban on Junk Fees: The FTC banned hidden fees for tickets, hotels, and vacation rentals, requiring upfront disclosure of total prices. The policy may face reversal under the incoming administration. Source: CNBC. - Murder Indictment: Luigi Mangione was indicted for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with charges including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism. Source: CNBC.

Geopolitical Updates

Middle East: - Reports indicate that the IDF is preparing for significant strikes in Yemen, pending Israeli government approval. - Israeli PM Netanyahu is reportedly traveling to Cairo to finalize a Gaza ceasefire agreement, though significant gaps remain between Israel and Hamas.

Corporate Highlights

- Honda and Nissan Merger Discussions: Honda (HMC) and Nissan (TYO:7201) are exploring a merger to strengthen investments in EVs and tackle declining sales in the U.S. and China. Honda's shares dropped 3%, while Nissan surged nearly 24%, its largest single-day gain in 40 years. Foxconn (TPE:2317) is reportedly pursuing a stake in the new venture. Sources: WSJ, CNBC, Bloomberg. - General Mills Slashes Forecast: General Mills (GIS) reduced its annual profit outlook, expecting a 1-3% decline due to increased promotions and reduced prices. Despite the forecast cut, Q2 revenue of $5.24B beat estimates, driven by a 3% increase in volumes. Shares were down 4% premarket. Source: Reuters. - Salesforce Expands AI Focus: Salesforce (CRM) plans to hire 2,000 additional sales staff to focus on its AI products, doubling its earlier commitment. The second generation of its AI Agentforce software will launch in February 2025. Shares rose 1% following the announcement. Source: CNBC. - Meta’s Ad Revenue Growth: Instagram is projected to account for over 50% of Meta's (META) U.S. ad revenue by 2025, driven by Reels and video monetization. A potential TikTok ban could further boost Instagram's growth. Source: Reuters. - Amazon Workers Threaten Strike: Amazon (AMZN) may face strikes from Teamsters union members during the holiday season, citing unsafe working conditions and a demand for union recognition. Source: BBC. - Starbucks Union Strike: Starbucks (SBUX) union members authorized a potential strike, with 98% support, ahead of final negotiations for the year. Starbucks expressed a commitment to productive talks. Source: CNBC. - Federal Probes into SpaceX: SpaceX and Elon Musk are under investigation for failing to report foreign meetings and other violations of security rules. Musk was recently denied high-level security clearance by the Air Force. Source: NY Times. - Databricks Raises $10B: AI Startup Databricks secured $10 billion in funding, valuing the company at $62 billion, surpassing rival Snowflake's market cap. Thrive Capital led the funding round. Source: NY Times. - Grubhub Settles with FTC: Grubhub (AMS:TKWY) agreed to a $25 million settlement over deceptive practices, including hidden fees and unauthorized restaurant listings. Refunds will be issued to affected customers. Source: CNBC.

Recent Earnings Recap

- General Mills (GIS): Revenue: $5.24B (+1.97% YoY, beats by $100M); EPS: $1.40 (+12.00% YoY, beats by $0.18). - HEICO (HEI): Revenue: $1.01B (+8.28% YoY, misses by $16M); EPS: $0.99 (+33.78% YoY, beats by $0.01). - Jabil (JBL): Revenue: $6.99B (-16.61% YoY, beats by $384M); EPS: $2.00 (-23.08% YoY, beats by $0.12). - Birkenstock (BIRK): Revenue: $500.93M (+22.88% YoY, beats by $61.64M); EPS: $0.32 (+128.57% YoY, beats by $0.06). - ABM Industries (ABM): Revenue: $2.18B (+4.01% YoY, beats by $97M); EPS: $0.90 (-10.89% YoY, beats by $0.03).

Upcoming Earnings

- Today: Micron Technology (MU), Lennar (LEN). - Tomorrow: Accenture (ACN), Nike (NKE), Cintas (CTAS), FedEx (FDX). - Friday: Carnival Corporation (CCL).

IPO Activity

Confirmed Today: - YSX Tech. Co., Ltd (YSXT): Revenue: $54.56M, growth: 63.28% YoY. - New Century Logistics (BVI) Limited (NCEW): Revenue: $52.15M, growth: -4.69% YoY. Estimated Upcoming: - Thursday: Health In Tech, Inc. (HIT); Range Capital Acquisition Corp. (RANG); Leishen Energy Holding Co., Ltd. (LSE). - Friday: Park Ha Biological Technology Co., Ltd. (PHH); Fast Track Group (FTRK).

Market Outlook and Future Events

The focus will remain on the Fed’s policy stance and market reaction to Chair Powell's guidance for 2025. Additionally, geopolitical developments and corporate earnings will influence sentiment heading into the end of the week. Read the full article

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months ago

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UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

#pluralistic #competition #advertising #surveillance advertising #saving the news from big tech #link taxes #trustbusting #competition and markets authority #uk #ukpoli #Ad Tech Collective Action #digital markets unit #Competition Appeal Tribunal

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cgnews · 19 days ago

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Texas lawmaker proposes state-managed Bitcoin reserve for financial stability

Texas lawmakers have introduced a bill to establish a state-managed Bitcoin reserve, aiming to explore the potential role of crypto in public finance. Filed on Dec. 13 by Republican Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, the legislation would allow the state to collect taxes, fees, and donations in Bitcoin, with the assets held for at least five years. Titled “An Act Relating to the Establishment of a…

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tamparealtortaylor · 20 days ago

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Maximizing Tax-Free Income with a Roth IRA: A Strategy for Cryptocurrency and Inheritance

In the world of investing, few things are as powerful as the potential to grow your wealth tax-free. A Roth IRA is one such tool, allowing your investments to grow without being taxed, and offering tax-free withdrawals in retirement. But did you know that you can use a Roth IRA to invest in cryptocurrency, pay the lowest taxes, and also pass that wealth on to future generations without them incurring a large tax bill? Let's break this down and explore how you can use this strategy to your advantage.

The Roth IRA: A Tax-Free Investment Vehicle

A Roth IRA is an individual retirement account that allows you to contribute after-tax money into the account. Unlike a traditional IRA, where contributions are made pre-tax and taxed later, the Roth IRA’s key advantage is that qualified withdrawals (after age 59 ½ and once the account has been open for at least 5 years) are entirely tax-free. This means that all the growth from your investments, including any capital gains, dividends, or interest, is never taxed.

But there’s more—Roth IRAs also provide a powerful inheritance benefit. If you pass away with funds in your Roth IRA, your beneficiaries can inherit the account and continue to enjoy tax-free growth, though they will need to follow specific rules regarding required distributions. This can be particularly powerful when combined with the next section on cryptocurrency investing.

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Using Cryptocurrency in a Roth IRA

Cryptocurrency has exploded in popularity over the last decade, with many seeing it as a new frontier of investment. The potential for growth in the crypto market is vast, but so is the tax burden that comes with it. When you buy and sell cryptocurrency outside of a tax-advantaged account, you must pay capital gains tax on any profits you make. In the case of long-term holdings (assets held for over a year), this tax can be substantial, especially with the rise in cryptocurrency values over time.

But by using a Roth IRA to hold your cryptocurrency, you avoid paying taxes on any of those gains. Here’s how it works:

Contribute to a Roth IRA: The first step is to make sure you’re eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA. If your income is below the IRS limits, you can directly contribute to a Roth IRA. If your income exceeds the limits, you may need to use a backdoor Roth IRA strategy to convert funds from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA.

Buy Cryptocurrency Inside the Roth IRA: Once your Roth IRA is set up, you can work with a custodian that allows you to invest in cryptocurrency. Many retirement account providers now offer the ability to purchase digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other altcoins within the IRA structure.

Enjoy Tax-Free Growth: As the value of your cryptocurrency grows, you won’t owe a penny in capital gains tax. Whether Bitcoin skyrockets to $100,000 or Ethereum sees a meteoric rise, you won’t have to worry about paying taxes on those profits.

Tax-Free Withdrawals in the Future: When you retire, you can withdraw your funds, including any gains from cryptocurrency, completely tax-free. This gives you a massive advantage over other investment strategies that may be subject to hefty taxes upon withdrawal.

Pass It Down to Future Generations: One of the best features of a Roth IRA is its ability to be passed on to heirs without tax consequences. Your beneficiaries can inherit your Roth IRA and continue to let the assets grow tax-free, potentially for generations. This is a huge benefit, particularly when dealing with highly volatile, high-growth assets like cryptocurrency.

An Example: Paying Hefty Taxes on a Lottery Win

To illustrate the importance of using tax-efficient strategies like a Roth IRA, consider the example of winning a lottery. Let’s say you win a $10 million lottery jackpot. While this sounds like a dream come true, the reality is that the U.S. government will take a large portion of that win in taxes. In fact, lottery winnings are taxed as ordinary income, which can be as high as 37% federally, and depending on where you live, state taxes can add another 5% to 10%.

So, after taxes, your $10 million lottery win might be reduced to about $6 million or less, depending on your state’s tax rates. This is a substantial tax bill that eats into your windfall, leaving you with less to invest and grow for the future.

Now, imagine that instead of winning the lottery, you were investing in cryptocurrency, but using a Roth IRA to hold your assets. If you had invested that $10 million in crypto within the Roth IRA and it grew to $100 million over time, you wouldn’t owe any taxes on those gains. When you withdraw the money in retirement, it would be completely tax-free.

Even better, if you pass away with that $100 million Roth IRA, your beneficiaries would inherit the account and continue to enjoy tax-free growth. In essence, the lottery win in a traditional taxable account is taxed heavily, whereas the cryptocurrency in a Roth IRA continues to grow without tax consequences, and can be passed down for generations to come.

The Power of Tax-Free Inheritance

The ability to pass wealth down to future generations without them having to pay taxes on the inherited assets is a key benefit of using a Roth IRA for long-term investment strategies. This is especially useful for cryptocurrency, which has the potential for massive gains over time.

For example, if you were to buy Bitcoin in a Roth IRA today and it grows exponentially in value over the next few decades, you could leave a significant amount of wealth to your heirs. They would be able to access the funds tax-free, and the account could continue to grow without taxes eating away at the balance.

This is a stark contrast to other types of investments, such as stocks or real estate, where capital gains taxes could significantly reduce the value passed on to heirs.

Conclusion: A Roth IRA for Crypto and Legacy Wealth

Using a Roth IRA to invest in cryptocurrency offers an incredible opportunity to grow wealth tax-free and pass it down to future generations. The potential for unlimited tax-free income is especially powerful when combined with the volatility and long-term growth potential of crypto assets. While other forms of wealth, such as lottery winnings, may be heavily taxed, cryptocurrency in a Roth IRA allows you to sidestep those taxes, giving you the ability to preserve and grow your wealth for the future.

If you're looking to maximize your returns and build a legacy of tax-free wealth, consider using a Roth IRA to hold your cryptocurrency. The tax advantages are clear, and the inheritance benefits make it an even more compelling option for anyone looking to build long-term financial freedom.

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