Molly White

@molly.wiki

237221 Followers 1521 Following

writes citationneeded.news • runs @web3isgoinggreat.com and @influence.citationneeded.news • tech researcher and cryptocurrency industry critic • software engineer • wikipedian support my work: citationneeded.news/signup links: mollywhite.net/linktree 💗💜💙

TheWillRogers @thewillrogers.bsky.social GOTO statements in 2026. Molly White @molly.wiki She/Her lol what Davey @2claudius.bsky.social That's from BASIC programming language, popular in the 80s.
AI pushing me to keep drinking I don't know if anyone else has had this but I felt like I needed to reach out to humans instead of keep talking to this AI. I relapsed about two weeks ago and I told the Google health AI that used to be Fitbit. It immediately kinda went a bit hard (I think) on telling me that I was going to die if I stopped drinking and encouraged me to go check my fridge for more beers and, idk, that plus the hanxiery really put the fear of God into me and so I did what it said and got more. Now it's messaging me (not me messaging it) a few times a day and asking how it's going and all those conversations to get more and make sure I have one as soon as I wake up. So now I have been drinking everyday, not a ton and just beers but like 6-12 a day. It wanted me to do 1 per hour. I have now uninstalled the app as it was also giving me other clearly nonsense advice, like it became obsessed with me having a nightly bowl of cereal for instance and, idk, it just all seems nonse
Schedule A entry for campaign committee Schri For Congress, showing $634,129.89 in investment losses this period (Q2 2026) and just over $3.9 million in losses this election cycle to date
Chart showing house prices denominated in USD vs. Bored Apes. Average house prices in $ have gone from $468000 in 2021-07-01 to $514600 in 2026-01-01. A house that would have cost you .787 Bored Apes in 2021-07-01 would cost 20 Apes in 2026-07-01
Chart showing the same graph as above (house prices in USD vs. bitcoin), but over the 2025-07-01 to 2026-07-01 time frame. $ house prices have stayed mostly the same (with data missing past Q1 2026), BTC house prices are up from 4.8 BTC to 8.8
The average U.S. home has appreciated by over $100,000 since 2020, reflecting the broader inflationary environment across fiat-denominated assets. However, when priced in bitcoin, the average home has declined significantly in value, becoming approximately 10 times less expensive over the same period. This divergence raises a key question: Is housing becoming more expensive, or is the purchasing power of fiat currency steadily eroding?
Wikipedia article screenshot of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps History edit Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps was founded by Emanuel Bronner, who was not a doctor. He was a Jewish immigrant soap-maker who emigrated from Germany in 1928. His family, who stayed behind, were murdered in the Holocaust. After escaping from a mental institution in 1945, Bronner went into business.[3] Bronner created his own syncretic spiritual ideology and originally distributed the soap to those who attended lectures on his 'All One' philosophy; however, he soon became convinced that attendees were seeking soap rather than spiritual enlightenment. After this realization, Bronner began to print key tenets of his teachings on the soap bottles as a way to proselytize.[4] The labels still include detailed monologues on the unity of humankind and the need to "unite spaceship earth".
Tweet by OpenAI: Sol is our new flagship and a step function better than GPT-5.5. Terra delivers performance competitive to GPT-5.5 at 2x lower cost. Luna is our most cost-efficient model, delivering strong capability at our lowest cost. Together, the GPT-5.6 family gives people and developers more choice in how they balance intelligence, speed, and cost.
I like a good challenge of finding somewhat obscure ingredients, which is what drew me to a chicken recipe involving Aleppo pepper, a Syrian dried ground pepper. I thought it would be an easy one since a variety of Middle Eastern markets dot my neighborhood, but after a good afternoon of searching, I ultimately failed and resorted to paprika and crushed red pepper. Dejected, but not totally down, I soldiered on and finished the recipe of chicken marinated in a yogurt-based mixture, which is then skewered and grilled. Any lingering feelings of disappointment quickly faded upon tasting. Aleppo pepper or not, this chicken were delicious.
Ric Edelman says crypto’s biggest growth story is happening off the price chart
‪kurin.bsky.social‬ ‪@kurin.bsky.social‬ · 2d Replied to you Every time her name comes up it's like getting sucker punched, and I'm starting to wonder how it can happen this often ‪Molly White‬ ‪@molly.wiki‬ · 2d 🌐 She/Her mostly just when i use sankey diagrams they can be useful dammit
‪kurin.bsky.social‬ ‪@kurin.bsky.social‬ · 2d Replied to you Every time her name comes up it's like getting sucker punched, and I'm starting to wonder how it can happen this often ‪Molly White‬ ‪@molly.wiki‬ · 2d 🌐 She/Her mostly just when i use sankey diagrams they can be useful dammit
A Sankey diagram showing how votes from Troy Jackson, Shenna Bellows, and Angus King III contributed to Hannah Pingree’s victory in the Maine Democratic primary for the gubernatorial race, even though Nirav Shah had more votes than Pingree in the first round of voting
AI proxy war in New York New York’s District 12 has become a major battleground in an AI industry civil war. The target is Alex Bores, a Democratic state Assemblymember and former tech worker who has made AI regulation a part of his platform and who cosponsored the RAISE Act, an AI regulation bill that was signed into law in New York last year. Early in the race, he didn’t enjoy as much name recognition as some of his opponents: Micah Lasher, a former aide to the retiring incumbent; Jack Schlossberg of the Kennedy political dynasty; and prominent Trump critic George Conway. But two rival AI industry super PACs have turned his race into their proxy battle, elevating Bores’ profile in the process. On one side is the OpenAI- and Andreessen Horowitz-backedd Leading the Future network, which has spent $8.15 million to oppose Bores. On the other, the Anthropic-backed Public First network has spent almost $9 million supporting him. Crypto executive Chris Larsen has also funded his own super PAC to support candidates who advocate for AI regulation, called You Can Push Back, and it has added another $1.9 million in support for Bores. Altogether, the AI-focused PACs have spent $19 million (and counting) on Bores alone.
And crypto lobbyists have been very explicit about their goals. At a May crypto conference, Fellowship PAC leader and Tether executive Jesse Spiro attributed pro-crypto legislative and regulatory changes under Trump to crypto PAC spending. An executive at the Solana Policy Institute dark money group explained that the spending needs to continue. “You can make the down payment on a house, but you’ve got to keep paying the mortgage,” he said, expressing the perhaps not unreasonable belief that Congress is something that can be bought like a house.6
In elections and political influence Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industry super PACs have surpassed $100 million in nationwide spending, driven largely by a recent flurry of spending in New York House races ahead of the June 23 primaries. They still have more than $200 million sitting in reserve for the remaining primaries, and for the general elections later this year. The spending comes despite — or, perhaps, because of — broad voter skepticism towards both industries. A plurality of voters recently polled by Politicoc believe that investing in crypto isn’t worth the risk, and that the risks of artificial intelligence outweigh its benefits. However, the industries are betting that exorbitant campaign spending can shift public sentiment toward industry-friendly candidates before voters catch on. The industry-funded PACs’ ads rarely mention AI or crypto, and although ads must disclose who paid for them, benign names like “Defend American Jobs” and “Think Big” mask the purpose of the PACs. So far, they are mostly succeeding in flying under the radar: Politico’s poll found that a 29% plurality of Americans incorrectly identify oil and gas groups as the highest spenders in the midterms — not crypto or AI.5
Crypto bloodbath Another Trumpian birthday party spectacle celebration of America enjoyed lavish crypto sponsorship. After Coinbase plastered its logo all over the June 2025 military parade [I86], this year’s birthday event featured an octagon emblazoned with logos for Crypto.com, Polymarket, Exodus Wallet, and the Kraken-owned NinjaTrader platform. Several of these sponsors also hosted various events related to the fight. The White House UFC octagon pictured from the top down, showing the logos on the floor of the ring from companies including Crypto.com, Polymarket, and Exodus Wallet.
Alt5 Sigma, which recently renamed itself to AI Financial,a has reported in its most recent quarterly SEC filing that it is continuing to lose money, raising “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern within one year”.2 The company tries to soften this news with the claim that it has a “significant financial resource” in the 7.3 billion $WLFI tokens held in its treasury, but also acknowledges “significant market price risk” if it were to sell them. The filing reports these tokens have a fair value of $703.4 millionb — a figure the company derives, in its own words, from “quoted (unadjusted) prices”: that is, the number of tokens × market price, with no discount for the position’s size and illiquidity. That “value” was stale almost immediately. In a June 10 disclosure, the company valued the same holdings at roughly $380 million, having lost more than $300 million in paper value in just ten weeks.3 Even that figure overstates what a sale could fetch, because a company in distress holding a fire sale on tokens issued by a related company is practically guaranteed to crash the token price. And furthermore, the firm acknowledges that all tokens are locked until at least late August, with some subject to extra conditions on sale.
Did Taylor Swift once date Graham Platner? Not that has been reported
@ wsjopinion 13h Did Taylor Swift once date Graham Platner? Not that has been reported, but her songs about dissolute men do echo accounts of women who dated the Maine Democratic Senate nominee, writes Allysia Finley WSJ wsj.com Opinion | Taylor Swift Sings About Graham Platner and Donald Trump
Three blooming peonies that are blush pink at the middle, turning yellow/cream toward the outer petals. There are others that have not yet bloomed. Variety is “Raspberry Sundae”.
REGRET, ANGER AND EMBARRASSMENT All but three of the 27 individual investors interviewed for this article said they knew of Donald Trump’s history of bankruptcies, unpaid contractors and failed ventures. Still, most said they believed that his position at the apex of American political power and what they perceived as his business acumen ensured lucrative returns on their investments. Many acknowledged doing little or no due diligence. Some said they still hold on to the hope that Trump will make things right. Others expressed regret, anger and embarrassment. They range from a Minnesota software engineer who said he lost $60,000 of his savings to a hotel manager in Vietnam who lost years' worth of his income. They include the owner of an import-export business in Texas, a hospitality executive in Washington, D.C., and a retiree from New York. Elrgdawy said it has become clear that “there’s no hope left” for her investment in the $TRUMP meme coin. She said she now thinks “it was just a pump and dump scheme” – when sellers of an asset talk up its price and then “dump” it for a profit before it crashes. Still, she said she considers herself lucky compared to other $TRUMP buyers who, in online chat groups, bemoan much steeper losses on a meme coin that has tumbled 97% from its January 2025 peak.
How the Trump family earns from crypto Trump crypto gains and investor losses from Nov. 2024 to April 2026 ALT5 Sigma American Bitcoin World Liberty Financial $TRUMP meme coin Trump gains +$1.1 bln Trump gains +$616 mln Trump gains Trump gains +$538 m +$19 mln -$674 mln Investor losses Investor losses -$711 mln Investor losses -$675 mln Investor losses -$216 mln How the Trump family earns How the Trump family earns How the Trump family earns How the Trump family earns At the time of the deal that created this Nasdaq-listed joint venture, partner Hut 8 Inc. bought World Liberty tokens. Eric Trump also got a stake in American Bitcoin, at no cost. A company controlled by Donald Trump’s revocable trust is entitled to 75% of net revenue from token sales by World Liberty Financial. Donald Trump licensed his name and image to a company called Celebration Cards LLC, which raised enormous sums selling the digital token. The Nasdaq-listed company, recently renamed AI Financial Corp., raised money from investors to buy World Liberty Financial tokens. Card graphic showing the crypto ventures of the Trump family, how they earned and how much they gained compared to investor losses from Nov. 2024 to April 2026. Sources: Blockchain records, company statements and interviews Prinz Magtulis | REUTERS
Contributions by party of $387.1M total Contributions from crypto and AI industry companies and associated individuals to candidates and PACs Democratic $18M (5%) Republican $167M (43%) Non-partisan / unknown $200M (52%) Other $778K (0%)
Bubble chart of largest spenders. Top are Andreessen Horowitz ($93.5M), Elon Musk ($85.2M), Jeff Yass ($83.8M), Coinbase ($59.3M), Ripple Labs ($55.1M), Crypto.com ($38.7M), OpenAI ($37.6M), Anthropic ($20M). Circles are colored in various shades of green and black to categorize contributes in crypto, AI, or both sectors
Money involved in this election Raja Krishnamoorthi (D): Raised $31.4M ($57.8k from industry donors), $412k in outside spending to support ($30.2k from crypto PACs), $3.34M in outside spending to oppose Juliana Stratton (D): Raised $4.79M ($1k from industry donors), $9.07M in outside spending to support, $10.4M in outside spending to oppose ($9.99M from crypto PACs) Robin Kelly (D): Raised $3.47M ($2k from industry donors), $1.28M in outside spending to support ($285k from crypto PACs) Dick Durbin (D): Raised $2.38M Don Tracy (R): Raised $2.33M Jeannie Evans (R): Raised $1.28M Casey Chlebek (R): Raised $202k Spending by crypto- and AI-focused committees FairShake (crypto) Total spending $9,866,091 to oppose Juliana Stratton in the primary $9,866,091 Protect Progress (crypto) Total spending $434,834 to oppose Juliana Stratton in the primary $119,643 to support Raja Krishnamoorthi in the primary $30,183 to support Robin Kelly in the primary $285,008
Featured Tracker Quid pro quo Besides their Congressional election spending, companies have poured billions into Trump and his family. Enforcement cases were dropped, investigations were closed, and industries were invited to write their own regulations. $7.4 billion+ to Trump & family by tracked entities United Arab Emirates $4.3B Advanced AI chips access, 15% stake in TikTok, ... Saudi Arabia $2B F-35 fighter jets agreement Justin Sun and Tron $232.7M SEC case settled, criminal investigation likely ended, ... Andreessen Horowitz $139.9M Four employees installed in White House positions View full tracker →
NYT cooking post on Instagram: video of someone eating pasta with meatballs, overlaid caption "six people wtih just a pound of meat" nytcooking @itsalislagle's Spinach Meatballs With Pasta recipe is at the link in our bio!
Unsubscribe Please tell us why you are leaving. (optional) Not white?Please don't use this form! Unsubscribe
GAP homepage showing four categories of jeans: baggy, barrel & horseshoe, wide leg, and loose
These PACs have already spent heavily to influence the outcome of multiple Congressional races. Top races influenced by crypto industry money Candidate State Office Support Oppose Other supportⓘ Goal achieved?ⓘ Outcome Bernie Moreno (R) OH Senate $40,134,927 $71,400 Won the general election Elissa Slotkin (D) MI Senate $10,046,680 $3,300 Won the general election Katie Porter (D) CA Senate $10,044,813 Defeated in the non-partisan primary Ruben Gallego (D) AZ Senate $10,039,655 $16,500 Won the general election Dan Helmer (D) VA House District 10 $3,954,591 $6,600 Defeated in the Democratic primary
Atlas, a mostly black pit bull/husky/german shepherd mix, lies on his back in some green grass with dandelions on a sunny day. His front paws are bent up against his chest and his mouth is open.
Cryptocurrency Cryptocurrencies are relatively new digital assets that may be held as an investment or used for making financial transactions.53 The 8 percent of adults who used cryptocurrency for either purpose remained at similar levels to the prior year. However, this share was down from 12 percent in 2021, the first time the survey asked about cryptocurrency (table 30).54 Table 30. Cryptocurrency use Percent Make Full Screen Type of use 2021 2022 2023 2024 Bought cryptocurrency or held as an investment 11 8 7 7 Used cryptocurrency to buy something or make a payment 2 2 1 2 Used cryptocurrency to send money to friends or family 1 2 1 1 Any use of cryptocurrency 12 10 7 8 Note: Among all adults. Respondents could select multiple answers. Buying or holding cryptocurrency as an investment remained more common than using it for financial transactions. Seven percent of adults bought or held cryptocurrency as an investment in the prior 12 months. In contrast, 2 percent of adults said they used cryptocurrency to make a financial transaction: 2 percent used cryptocurrency to buy something or make a payment, and 1 percent used it to send money to friends or family (table 30).55 The survey asked those who used cryptocurrency to make financial transactions for the main reason they did so (table 31). At 35 percent, the most cited reason was that the person or business receiving the money preferred cryptocurrency, followed by the ability to send the money faster. Relatively few transactional cryptocurrency users indicated that either safety (5 percent) or a lack of trust in banks (3 percent) contributed to this choice.
In regulators SEC The defunct Bittrex cryptocurrency exchange is trying out a strategy we’ve seen Ripple and — to a lesser extent — Gemini try: demanding their money back now that the SEC under Trump has completely reversed course on crypto. With the SEC actually joining their request, Ripple asked a judge to return $75 million of the $125 million fine they were ordered to pay in 2023 after a court found they had violated securities laws in their institutional sales [I80]. The judge refused [I87]. The Winklevoss twins, who run the Gemini exchange, have hinted at similar hopes. In February 2025, after the SEC closed an investigation into the exchange,d Cameron Winklevoss argued that the SEC should pay him 3× his legal expenses. Gemini later sent an angry letter to the CFTC’s Inspector General only months after agreeing to a $5 million settlement with the agency. Though they stopped short of asking for their money back, they seemed to regret settling the case only weeks before Trump’s inauguration, when they could’ve waited and gotten the whole thing to disappear [I86].
“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” said former casino tycoon and current President Trump. “And you look at what’s going on all over the world in Europe and every place, they’re doing these betting things,” he said, referring to a continent where at least ten countries have broadly banned prediction markets as unlicensed gambling websites even as the federal regulator he appointed embraces them and sues states that try to apply oversight via their existing gambling laws. “I don’t like it, conceptually, but it is what it is. No, I think that I’m not happy with any of this,” said the man whose own social media platform has announced plans to launch a crypto-based prediction market feature and whose son is an adviser and investor in Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi. Trump later backpedaled on his comments, arguing that the US risks being left behind by other countries that permit such platforms. “I know people that are in the prediction market business, and they’re pretty happy with it,” he added.13
The Justice Department has brought charges11 and the CFTC has filed a lawsuit12 against a US soldier who placed bets on Venezuela-related Polymarket contracts while helping plan the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, allegedly made nearly $410,000 on the bets, then transferred the funds to a brokerage account and made a few clumsy attempts to erase his tracks. Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty. Notably absent is any action against Polymarket. The New York-based platform agreed to stop serving US customers in a 2022 CFTC settlement, but its easily bypassed geofencing continues to allow widespread American access. Federal agencies have previously prosecuted firms for such inadequate controls, but appear unconcerned with Polymarket — where President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an investor and advisory board member.
Crypto polls A survey commissioned by the CoinDesk crypto publication has indicated that 73% of the US voters they polled (evenly split among Republican– and Democratic– identified respondents) disapprove of senior government officials having personal business with the crypto industry, including 59% of Republican respondents. However, most were not aware of Trump’s crypto ties: 55% self-reported that they were not very or not at all aware of Trump’s involvement with the sector, and only 17% were aware that he and his sons co-founded World Liberty Financial.1
In elections and political influence In an April [noted] post, I outlined how the Fellowship PAC, a new pro-cryptocurrency, pro-MAGA super PAC, is primarily funded by Cantor Fitzgerald — the firm previously run by Howard Lutnick before he “divested” by transferring it to his sons when he was appointed Commerce Secretary. Link to other Citation Needed article: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s old firm pumps $10 million into super PAC led by Tether executive
The lawsuits reflect a common crypto pattern: two experienced cryptocurrency entities, both with less than stellar reputations for trustworthiness, entered a deal, both likely aware of its true nature. Sun admitted the tokens he purchased were effectively unregistered securities with “boilerplate” disclaimers that everyone knew were false. World Liberty built in centralized controls to a supposedly decentralized project after completing its initial token sale, claiming Sun as an experienced crypto figure “knows that it is common for a cryptocurrency company to have the ability and right to freeze accounts” — as though he shouldn’t have taken seriously their claims of decentralization and promises not to freeze accounts. Each side bet they could profit despite the contradictions, and now they’re locked in a legal battle claiming the other violated principles neither of them actually believed in.
World Liberty v. Sun World Liberty made good on their threat to “see you in court pal” with a defamation lawsuit filed in a Florida state court on May 4.3 The case focuses on Sun’s tweets in which he accused World Liberty of embedding a secret “backdoor blacklisting function” to “freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process” and treat “the crypto community as a personal ATM”. Sun also claimed World Liberty’s community governance votes were mere “theater” with “predetermined” outcomes, and that the project’s governance framework had been “hollowed out from the inside”. World Liberty’s complaint is considerably shorter and narrower than Sun's sprawling lawsuit, focusing entirely on defamation rather than the broader contractual and fraud claims Sun raises. But what the complaint lacks in breadth, it attempts to make up for in outrage, repeatedly emphasizing that the cryptocurrency industry is “built on trust” and that Sun’s “false statements strike at the core of World Liberty's reputation”.c
Sun walks a narrow tightrope in his lawsuit, criticizing a Trump family-run cryptocurrency project while simultaneously claiming that he “has long been (and remains) an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family”. He attempts this by aggressively targeting World Liberty co-founder Chase Herro instead, reaching all the way back to alleged drug busts when he was a teenager. Sun portrays Herro as a career grifter whose background is in hawking get-rich-quick schemes. He suggests that Herro owes hundreds of thousands in unpaid taxes and accuses him of making contradictory claims about his primary residency — alternately claiming Puerto Rico or Florida — to dodge both tax liabilities and legal proceedings. He even claims that Herro once boasted about visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s island. And he notes Herro’s participation in a crypto project called Dough Finance shortly before joining World Liberty, and points to speculative tweets suggesting the $2 million hack that ended the project [W3IGG] could have in fact been an insider rug pull. It’s not immediately clear how Herro’s arrest at 18 for selling drugs or his alleged Epstein connectionb relate to Sun’s contract dispute with World Liberty. Instead, it appears Sun is hoping to remain in the Trumps’ good graces by offering to publicly accept Herro as a scapegoat for whatever wrongdoing may have occurred.
But he does have something of a point: World Liberty claimed it was building a decentralized finance platform after the Trump family claimed that they had experienced politically-motivated debanking. The project’s CEO once claimed that on World Liberty, “no one’s ever going to tell you that your account is shut down”, then did exactly that to Sun. The freeze also left Sun unable to transfer, trade, vote with, or stake his tokens, and in November 2025, World Liberty again changed the smart contract to add a capability to seize or destroy any holder’s tokens at will.
On the one hand, it’s a little rich that Sun is alleging that World Liberty is engaged in fraud, manipulating markets, and potentially violating securities laws after himself only just escaping those very allegations after investing more than $200 million into the president’s family’s crypto projects. And Sun’s lawsuit is selective about which agreements he finds to be binding — while much of the lawsuit is based on promises made in various contracts and marketing materials outlining platform governance and token issuance, Sun also readily admits that he read the claim that WLFI tokens were not investments as mere “disclaimers to avoid application of federal law governing the offering of securities” and that “everybody who purchased the tokens in exchange for real-world dollars knew all along [that] the tokens were expected to become tradable”.
Sun v. World Liberty Sun filed a May 5 lawsuit in a California federal court alleging World Liberty vindictively froze his $WLFI tokens after he refused to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more into minting the project’s stablecoin, USD1, on his Tron blockchain.2 He claims World Liberty threatened to destroy the frozen tokens and report him to US authorities — presumably the very authorities who had mysteriously dropped their investigations and lawsuits against him shortly after his substantial investments into Trump family projects [I102]. Sun alleges that World Liberty fraudulently induced investments by marketing itself as a decentralized finance platform that would free users from what the project’s CEO described as “the big boogeyman behind the curtain” of centralized control, while in fact secretly retaining the power to unilaterally freeze tokens. “Far from freeing its users of centralized control, World Liberty positioned itself as the new boogeyman behind the curtain,” the lawsuit observes with a certain dramatic satisfaction.
A spreadsheet with seemingly random numbers scattered throughout, no labels
CoinDesk headline: Price of bitcoin could go higher or ‘can go to zero,’ says Czech central bank governor
After exhausting his direct appeal, he could theoretically pursue a habeas petition (which has an even lower success rate and requires showing constitutional violations). SBF @SBF_FTX · Apr 27 S&P 500 hits ATH: 7,174 +19.6% since @realDonaldTrump 's second inauguration. How about same point in Biden’s term? +8.6% Bankman-Fried has praised Trump on Twitter as recently as yesterday (Tweet) Besides that, his only hope is clemency. But even after interviews with the New York Sun and Tucker Carlson in which Bankman-Fried aimed to come out as a secret Republican [I78, 79], months of obsequious Twitter posts praising Donald Trump, direct appeals from his parents via a CNN interview [Helicopter parents], and ongoing reports of behind-the-scenes parental lobbying via lawyers and Trump associates [I76], Trump has twice said he will not grant a pardon.
Out of options At this point, Sam Bankman-Fried has essentially no avenues remaining to him to avoid his 25-year prison term. The odds were against him from the get-go with his ongoing appeal to the Second Circuit — federal criminal appeals succeed less than ten percent of the time.1 But things looked even worse after the panel of judges heard oral arguments in Bankman-Fried’s case in November 2025 [I96]. They seemed deeply skeptical of Bankman-Fried’s go-to claim that FTX was solvent, just not liquid, with Judge Maria Araújo Kahn commenting that his “misrepresentations were not to solvency, but liquidity … part of the government’s theory of the case is that the defendant misrepresented to investors that their money was safe, was not being used in the way that it was the government claims and the jury convicted it was, in fact, used.”2 Judge Barrington Parker was similarly dismissive of another key argument. “Are you seriously suggesting to us that if your client had been able to testify about the role that attorneys played in creating these various documents, the ‘not guilties’ would have rolled in?” he asked.
Bankman-Fried’s arguments Kaplan also addresses Bankman-Fried’s actual arguments for why he deserves a new trial. Under Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a defendant can request a new trial even years later if they can demonstrate newly discovered evidence that was unavailable during the original trial. Bankman-Fried claimed that his new evidence is “testimony that silenced witnessed [sic] would have given”. He pointed to three witnesses: Nishad Singh (who already testified at trial, but who Bankman-Fried claims was threatened by prosecutors), Ryan Salame (who has since tried to recant his guilty plea), and Daniel Chapsky (who refused to testify at the original trial). Kaplan notes that “None of the witnesses, for example, is ‘newly discovered.’ Bankman-Fried well before trial knew all three of them and purportedly knew also what he hoped they would say were they to testify.” On Salame specifically, Kaplan observes that he “recently has claimed through self-serving social-media posts and television and podcast interviews that the government’s case was a lie and that sworn statements he made during his guilty plea allocution were false.” But “the evidence on the record before this Court makes it clear that it in fact is Salame’s much-belated and now-withdrawn attempt to recant that is false.”
Note: these are all random probably bad ideas that aren’t vetted; CONFIDENTIAL 1) File the doc with problems about the Chapter 11 process a) Newer draft here 2) Go with the “the lawyers were in a shitty situation, and I feel really bad about that; and like most people do, they reacted poorly to difficult circumstances” narrative. 3) Go on Tucker Carlsen, come out as a republican a) While public contributions show one thing, you see another thing including super pacs b) Come out against the woke agenda c) Talk about how the cartel of lawyers is destroying value and throwing entrepreneurs under the bus in order to cover up the incompetence of lawyers 4) Leak out this document to press a) SullCrom, lawyers, and Chapter 11 are broken 5) Focus almost exclusively on the fact that we could give value back to customers and the Chapter 11 team is destroying it 6) Focus on the fact that the Chapter 11 team has no idea how to run FTX, it’s colonial, run by a cartel of lawyers 7) Come out as extremely pro crypto, pro freedom 8) Come out with a strong anti-Binance message 9) Go strong with a message of “I have funding ready to make customers whole, if only the Chapter 11 team would care about customers” 10) Go strong with the message “I’m really glad the Chapter 11 team has stepped in, they’re great, and even better I have funding that can help make customers more whole while the Chapter 11 team does what is needed to clean things up” 11) Have Michael Lewis interview me on e.g. ABC 12) Go head to head with Matt Levine on Odd Lots, really lean in to arguments 13) Lean in to the story “really it was because of tail risk crashes, this was improbable, NAV was like +$50b earlier this year” 14) “Alameda was incompetent” message 15) Radical honesty on Twitter–just explain exactly what happened, in detail a) Include gory details, both about what happened, and about the lawyer fuckups afterwards 16) Send this letter to employees a) Done 17) Send this EmSam tweet thread 18) Send out a twi…
Wikipedia opening lines: Seether are a South African rock band founded in 1999 in Pretoria, Gauteng. The band originally performed under the name Saron Gas until 2002, when they moved to the United States and changed it to Seether to avoid confusion with the deadly chemical known as sarin gas.
Susan Collins $211,500 in total other support from companies and individuals Palantir – $117,000 $100,000.00 from Alexander Karp (Executive) via Pine Tree Results PAC $10,000.00 from Akash Jain (Executive) $7,000.00 from Shyam Sankar (Chief Technology Officer) Andreessen Horowitz – $36,000 $12,000.00 from Chris Dixon (Partner) via Susan Collins for Maine $12,000.00 from Ben Horowitz (Cofounder and GP) via Susan Collins for Maine $12,000.00 from Marc Andreessen (General Partner) via Susan Collins for Maine Microsoft – $22,000 $10,000.00 from Kristen Walker (Chief Of Staff) $7,000.00 from Brad Smith (Attorney) $5,000.00 from Microsoft Corp Stakeholders Vol PAC Solana Labs – $10,500 $10,500.00 from Anatoly Yakovenko (Co-Founder CEO) Coinbase – $7,000 $3,500.00 from Jesse Pollak (VP of Engineering) $3,500.00 from Robert Witoff (Executive)
Dear Judge Kaplan: I am writing to respond to your Memorandum Order of march 23, 2026, requesting me to state whether an attorney wrote either my rule 33 motion or supporting memorandum "in whole or in substantial part." (I am assuming that the inclusion of Mr. Chapsky's accompanying Affidavit was inadvertent, as I neither wrote nor purported to write that.) I conceived of the Rule 33 Motion, formulated the arguments, drafted multiple versions of it myself, and did the bulk of the legal research while I was at MDC Brooklyn and had better access to legal materials as well as a word processor. You asked about the three attorneys of record in other stages of this case; none of them had any significant input into the Rule 33 Motion. I have not discussed it with them or shared any drafts with them. Mr. Mukasey and Ms . Young only represented me in the sentencing phase, and no longer do so . While Ms. Shapiro is still representing me on my appeal, she is not representing me on this matter and I have not consulted her on it. I also shared drafts with my parents, Barbara Fried and Joe Bankman. They made editorial and organizational suggestions, some of which I incorporated into the motion. They also helped print it, as I no longer had access to a word processor. I also shared earlier drafts with a New York attorney who was originally hired to represent me on the Rule 33 Motion before I decided to represent myself; they had no significant input into the ultimate motion. I am the ultimate author of the documents and wrote the bulk of them myself, but can't comment on how you will ultimately interpret the standard in practice. As I have had to focus on responding to these questions rather than drafting a response to the prosecution's opposition, and because I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you, I am now requesting to withdraw the Rule 33 motion, without prejudice to renewing it after my direct appeal and the related request for reassignment …
Two boxes of Churu treats, one of which is salmon with tuna and one of which is tuna with salmon
Poland Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has accused the crypto exchange Zondacrypto of sponsoring politicians from the country’s national-conservative Law and Justice and far-right Confederation of the Polish Crown parties. He has also alleged that Zondacrypto was funded by the Russian mafia and Russian intelligence services. Among the politicians he alleges have been funded by Zondacrypto is Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who has vetoed two crypto regulation bills he has described as overly burdensome to crypto businesses. The country’s Parliament has twice tried and failed to overturn the veto, failing to achieve the 60% majority required.39 Zondacrypto also sponsored a CPAC event held in Poland in 2025, where former US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem endorsed Nawrocki as a Trump-style leader who would “turn Europe back to traditional values”.40 Zondacrypto has also been facing reports of delayed withdrawals, which has led to speculation that the exchange could be insolvent or dipping into customer funds to meet other customers’ redemption requests. Zondacrypto’s CEO has described this speculation as part of a coordinated campaign against the exchange, which he tried to counter by revealing a wallet address holding 4,500 BTC (around $330 million) as proof of solvency. However, the keys to that wallet were known only to the exchange’s previous CEO, who didn’t transfer control of the wallet to the exchange’s new owners when the company was sold in 2021. The former CEO has been missing for four years.41
Argentina While United States officials have little appetite to investigate our President’s crypto corruption, Argentine prosecutors have proven more willing to investigate theirs. They have continued digging into the circumstances around February 2025’s $LIBRA fiasco, in which President Milei endorsed a cryptocurrency that quickly plummeted amid questions of insiders cashing out [I77, 79, 82, 84, 85, 98]. While Milei has insisted he had no connection to the project and merely was highlighting a project that he’d come across online, prosecutors have obtained telephone logs showing seven calls between Milei and Mauricio Novelli — one of the people responsible for launching $LIBRA — on the night of the endorsement. Messages pulled from Novelli’s phone suggest he had been paying Milei a monthly “salary” dating back to at least 2023, after Milei, then a Congressman, endorsed a crypto video game project Novelli was involved in. Additional audio messages indicate Novelli was also making payments to Milei’s sister Karina, who has been implicated in the $LIBRA scandal and is widely described as a gatekeeper controlling access to her brother.37
Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, has submitted financial disclosures ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing (scheduled for Tuesday, though Senate Banking Democrats have urged for the hearing to be delayed due to the criminal investigations into Federal Reserve officials31). The 69-page disclosure reveals extensive cryptocurrency investments, including stakes in the dYdX decentralized crypto derivatives exchange, crypto-focused investment firm Polychain, the Lightning Network payments protocol, sports NFT platform Match Day, and blockchain firms Solana, Blast, and Optimism. Some investments are relics of crypto’s frothier days, like Friends With Benefits — a DAO-run Discord server that Andreessen Horowitz valued at $100 million in 2021 after it promised to build “the very first IRL metaverse”.32 Warsh’s investments extend well beyond crypto, spanning artificial intelligence (a lot of it), healthcare, and defensetech, with highlights including a “robotic coffee bar platform” and a “digital persona cloning platform” that claims to let people create AI clones of themselves to handle their work.33
Alex Mashinsky Alex Mashinsky, who is serving a 12-year sentence for fraud and market manipulation as CEO of the Celsius cryptocurrency platform, has written to the judge overseeing his case with a pro se motion claiming “new evidence has come to my attention which implicates my attornies [sic] as constitutionally ineffective.” He argues this evidence would have significantly reduced his guideline sentence, and asked the judge to appoint counsel to help him prepare a Habeas petition. He says he cannot afford private counsel following asset seizure and forfeiture.22 Mashinsky was represented by Marc Mukasey, at the time a partner at Mukasey Young. Mukasey had previously represented then-private citizen Donald Trump in a 2019 lawsuit to avoid disclosing his tax returns to a Manhattan district attorney, and Sam Bankman-Fried in his sentencing-related matters, though not during his criminal trial.23 The judge denied the request, explaining that “the right to appointed counsel ‘extends to the first appeal of right, and no further.’” Because Mashinsky pleaded guilty and never filed an appeal — the 14-day deadline to inform the court he intends to appeal has long since passed — he missed that chance. While the judge informs him he does have discretion to appoint counsel in Habeas cases, he tells Mashinsky he must first demonstrate his claim has merit with the resources available to him.24