I’m watching closely to see if crypto money will enter the NYC mayoral race, where crypto (and other) billionaires have been reacting with horror at Mamdani’s win.
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![While Mamdani has not expressed an opinion on crypto, his upcoming opponents have. Incumbent mayor Eric Adams, elected as a Democrat but running for re-election as an Independent, recently appeared at the Bitcoin Conference to reinforce his title of “bitcoin mayor” and suggest that New York City issue bitcoin-backed municipal bonds (an idea that was quickly swatted down by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, who was also a candidate in the Democratic primary, coming in third place after cross-endorsing Mamdani) [I85]. Mamdani’s closest opponent in the primary who will now also be running as an Independent candidate in the general election, former New York governor and alleged sex pest Andrew Cuomo, advised crypto exchange OKX after resigning as governor in 2021, when the company faced criminal charges that would ultimately land them more than $500 million in penalties.2425 And the Republican contender, perennial candidate Curtis Sliwa, tweeted during his 2021 campaign that he would “make NYC the most cryptocurrency-friendly city in the nation” by allowing property taxes to be paid in crypto, installing more crypto ATMs, and encouraging businesses to accept crypto.26 (That said, he also later criticized Adams for spending too much time with “crypto profiteers”, “crypto currency pirates”, and “crypto monsters”.2728)
Tyler Winklevoss, one of the twin billionaires behind the Gemini crypto exchange who contributed millions of dollars to political campaigns in 2024, seems to be at least](https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/779/586/379/005/289/original/5c347f90bae1a706.png)
@molly0xfff
That's one way to kill Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and the federal govt?). Bankruptcy is coming.
@molly0xfff is this new? I literally just sent my mortgage broker at Rocket Mortgage the statements from my CoinBase account..... like 20 minutes ago.
@molly0xfff LOL. The EU's having a new Anti-Money Laundering Authority.
So Trump will have to launder dirty & bloody money using crypto in the United States.
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For all Trump likes to talk about “America First” crypto, his businesses are looking very UAE-first. Trump’s World Liberty Financial has just secured a $100 million investment from the UAE-based Aqua 1 Foundation, which has leapfrogged Justin Sun in Trump’s pay-for-access leaderboard.
![Trump business interests
Aqua 1 Foundation, a United Arab Emirates-based crypto fund, has spent $100 million to acquire WLFI tokens, the token issued by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial Project, and cultivate a close relationship with the Trumps. They have just surpassed shady crypto billionaire Justin Sun and his $75 million investment to become the single largest holder of WLFI tokens.1 World Liberty also profited massively last month from a deal in which Emirati investment firm MGX used the company’s USD1 stablecoin to perform a $2 billion investment into Binance [I83]. In a press release, Aqua 1 claimed that they and World Liberty would work closely to “jointly identify and nurture high-potential blockchain projects”, and said that World Liberty “plans to support the launch of Aqua 1’s Aqua Fund — a UAE-domiciled investment fund ... dedicated to accelerating the Middle East’s digital economy transformation”.2 For all Trump likes to talk about “America First” crypto projects, his businesses are looking very UAE-first.
World Liberty also just announced a partnership with London-based Re7 Capital, a decentralized hedge fund backed by the Hong Kong multi-family office VMS Group. The partnership aims to increase USD1 uptake on BNB Chain, the blockchain run by Binance.3 Connections between Binance and Trump have already been controversial, with Democratic Senators Warren, Durbin, and Blumenthal writing a May letter requesting information on Trump’s connections to](https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/779/560/270/449/469/original/87fde2170672ab78.png)
There’s been some reporting that Trump is pulling away from his crypto projects, but this isn’t supported by financial disclosures published on June 13.
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A reporter tried asking Trump directly if he might divest from his crypto businesses, and Trump repeated “I’m president” and rambled about China. So... that’s a no, I guess
@molly0xfff Note how he rambles about “a third time” here when he should have said “second time”, wonder why that might be on his mind 🤔
“I only decided to run because […] I was in bitcoin then. Not— not knowing if I was going to do it a third time”
@molly0xfff The fat orange fascist rambles because HE'S SENILE!
@molly0xfff
Most everything that comes out of this man's mouth is either batshit crazy or horrible or both. So I thank you for not only making a transcript but including it as alt text to the video so I don't have to listen to him.
FHFA Director Bill Pulte has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “prepare a proposal for consideration of cryptocurrency as an asset for reserves in their respective single-family mortgage loan risk assessments.”
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@molly0xfff crypto backed mortgages, what could go wrong
Judge Analisa Torres has rejected the joint request by the SEC and Ripple to lift the permanent injunction and reduce Ripple’s $125 million penalty to only $50 million. Ripple has opted to walk away rather than continue their ongoing appeal.
![SEC
Federal Judge Analisa Torres rejected the joint request by Ripple and the SEC to lift the August 2024 permanent injunction ordering Ripple to obey securities laws and reduce the $125 million penalty to only $50 million [I63]. This outcome is no huge surprise given Torres’ previous skepticism towards a malformed request to do the same thing [I84]. Torres elaborated:16
Not that long ago, the SEC made a compelling case that the public interest weighed heavily in favor of a permanent injunction and a substantial civil penalty. ... First, a penalty was necessary because Ripple had violated the law. ... Second, the SEC pressed for a permanent injunction because Ripple’s misconduct was reckless and likely to continue. ... None of this has changed—and the parties hardly pretend that it has. Nevertheless, they now claim that it is in the public interest to cut the Civil Penalty by sixty percent and vacate the permanent injunction entered less than a year ago.
Torres essentially left Ripple with two options: accept the earlier penalties and walk away, or continue fighting to have the judgment overturned on appeal. Ripple chose the latter the following day, dropping its cross appeal against the SEC. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse also wrote that they still expected the SEC to drop their appeal as well, which was filed before Trump took office and which sought penalties closer to the nearly $2 billion originally requested by the agency.17](https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/779/580/914/112/434/original/a44a71fec5ceb5b0.png)
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