Best of citationneeded.news on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
96 stories from citationneeded.news have been shared on Kiwi News since 5 January 2024, with 151 upvotes and 20 comments in total. The latest was shared on 3 October 2026. The 50 most upvoted are listed below.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Become a Wikipedian in 30 minutes
Molly White argues that the most effective defense against Wikipedia being overrun by AI-generated content is for more people to learn to edit, and she offers to walk readers through getting started in about 30 minutes. The discussion began on BlueSky, where others raised concerns that a Wikipedia article had cited an AI-generated "source" containing falsehoods and that such errors could become a general trend. White says that when she encourages people to edit, they often reply that they tried once but felt overwhelmed by the volume of policies, the bureaucratic feel, or the fear of being reverted by more experienced editors. The text provided is an introduction, and the walkthrough itself is presented in a linked video.
- Trump says he has “no idea” who he just pardoned
Trump said he has "no idea" who Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is, after facing criticism over his October 2025 pardon of Zhao. In a CBS News interview with Norah O'Donnell, Trump said he had been "told" Zhao was treated badly by the Biden administration and was highly respected, and when asked about the appearance of corruption, he said, "I'd rather not have you ask the question." The article notes that Zhao had served four months in prison and paid a $50 million fine, and that Binance paid $4.3 billion. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Murphy have criticized the pardon, with Warren leading a letter from seven Senators to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
- Privacy, human rights, and Tornado Cash
Privacy is described as a bigger concern than crypto crime, with the conviction of Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev cited as an example. Pertsev was sentenced in the Netherlands to 64 months (over five years) for money laundering tied to the mixing service, which is said to have enabled criminals to launder billions of dollars in illicit funds. Holding someone liable for merely writing privacy-protecting code because criminals later used it is called extremely concerning, and a judge's statement that Tornado Cash "suits criminal use" is quoted. The piece also argues that US financial privacy is weak, since cash transactions over $10,000 must be reported.
- Fighting for our web
Molly White's talk at XOXO argues that the web's problems stem from the industry built around it, not the web itself, and that ordinary people can still shape it. She recalls how customizing Neopets user lookup pages and later editing Wikipedia made the web feel like something she could change. She describes today's web as dominated by a few social networks that reward engagement farming and rage-baiting, along with AI-generated content and scrapers that push quality work behind paywalls. She cites the "enshittification" term from Cory Doctorow and says platforms' stranglehold on the web is tenuous.
- Review: Chris Dixon's Read Write Own
Reviewer Ed Zitron's review of Chris Dixon's book Read Write Own argues that the book's case for blockchains as the fix for Big Tech's control of the web is unconvincing. The review says Dixon, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, identifies web monopolization but offers no blockchain project that has provided a non-speculative service at scale. It cites Helium as the closest example and notes the network was pulling in about $1,150 in usage fees a month while the company was valued at $1.2 billion. The review also says Dixon does not address criticism of blockchains, and that the book's notes section cites sources for minor claims rather than its major ones.
- Review: Chris Dixon's Read Write Own
Reviewer Ludwig Siegele's... actually the article doesn't name the reviewer, so I should not invent a name. The article is a critical review arguing that Chris Dixon's book Read Write Own, a case for blockchains as the fix for Big Tech's control of the web, is unconvincing. The reviewer says Dixon never identifies a blockchain project that has provided a non-speculative service at scale, and cites Helium as the closest example, noting that it was providing LoRaWAN rather than internet access, earned about $1,150 in usage fees a month while valued at $1.2 billion, and that a16z invested millions in it without Dixon mentioning this. The review also says Dixon's claim that blockchains cannot change their rules is contradicted by his own reference to community consensus over software changes, and that the book's Part Four runs only four and a half pages.
- Issue 53 – Choose rich
This issue of a crypto newsletter argues that the current price rally has brought the same underlying problems as the last bubble, and that more people will be hurt when it ends. Bitcoin passed its previous all-time high on March 5, 2024 and crossed $70,000 on March 8. Other items cover Roman Sterlingov's conviction on four money laundering and unlicensed money transmission charges, and Changpeng Zhao being ordered to surrender his Canadian passport. The newsletter also reports that Christopher Harborne has sued The Wall Street Journal for defamation in Delaware over a March 2023 article.
- This is hardship
Bitcoin has fallen below $100,000, erasing much of the "Trump pump" gains, and some traders fear another crypto bust after a $110 million Balancer exploit on November 3 and a $93 million Stream Finance collapse the next day. The Trump Organization says a Maldives resort developed with Saudi company Dar Global will be financed by tokenizing its construction phase and selling tokens to US retail investors, though it has not said whether buyers will receive any resort revenue. Trump also announced F-35 sales to Saudi Arabia, and interrupted an ABC News question from Mary Bruce about Khashoggi's assassination.
- The pardon was the payoff
Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao after months of lobbying, a move the article presents as a quid pro quo tied to Trump's financial gains from Binance. The article says Binance accepted a $2 billion investment from MGX denominated in Trump's USD1 stablecoin in May, and that the SEC later dismissed a case against Binance with prejudice. It also reports that Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to a felony charge over anti-money laundering failures and was released in September 2024 after four months in prison. The White House press secretary described the prosecution as part of a "war on crypto," which the article criticizes as an effort to dodge accountability.
- As he builds US power, Justin Sun fights to control his story
Justin Sun has sued Bloomberg over its planned publication of details about his crypto fortune, which he had provided to qualify for the Billionaires Index. According to the article, Bloomberg's estimate values Sun's holdings at $12.3 billion, with most of it in TRX, the token issued by his company Tron, of which he holds about 63% of the circulating supply. Sun's lawsuit says the draft contained granular holdings that threaten his privacy and safety, and it alleges a breach of confidentiality. The article notes that Telegram exhibits attached to the lawsuit show his team sharing the data with Bloomberg journalist Dylan Sloan and that Sun posted a confidentiality agreement only in late March.
- Big publishers think libraries are the enemy
Today's e-book lending limits are a system publishers created rather than a legal requirement, and the Second Circuit's September 4, 2024 decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive treats libraries as harmful to society. The court upheld most of a March 2023 lower-court ruling that aspects of the Internet Archive's Open Library controlled digital lending program violate copyright; the suit was brought in June 2020 by Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley and Penguin Random House. Critics of the ruling note the court relied on unsupported claims of harm, while the Internet Archive cited an economist who found no measurable effect on e-book or print sales.
- Issue 57 - I take deep breath and I get real high
Molly White's Citation Needed issue 57 covers a run of crypto legal and regulatory developments, led by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao's sentencing to four months in prison. The article notes that prosecutors had requested three years, the Probation Office recommended five months, and Zhao also must pay a $50 million personal fine. It also reports that the SEC sent Consensys a Wells notice on April 10 and that Consensys sued the agency on April 25, alleging unlawful regulation of ether. The piece adds that the SEC has sent Robinhood Crypto a Wells notice, and that Roger Ver was indicted on tax fraud charges.
- Issue 56 – What are you gonna do, arrest me?
Molly White's newsletter covers several crypto legal developments and market observations in April 2024. Bitcoin transaction fees spiked after the halving and the Runes launch, with a single block spending 37.626 BTC (about $2.4 million) on fees and average fees around $32, up from $10 to $20 before the halving. Changpeng Zhao's sentencing is set for April 30, with the DOJ requesting 36 months and Zhao's lawyers requesting probation, while the SEC seeks $4.74 billion in disgorgement from Terraform Labs and Do Kwon.
- Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia
Elon Musk and other prominent right-wing figures have launched a campaign against Wikipedia, urging followers to stop donating to the Wikimedia Foundation. Musk's December 24 tweet, "Stop donating to Wokepedia," was followed by posts from Chaya Raichik, Mario Nawfal, and others that criticized the Foundation's $50 million spending on "diversity, equity, and inclusion." The article argues these budget categories directly support Wikipedia's reliability, and it says Musk's claim about Bill Clinton's Epstein connections was a misrepresentation, since the text was moved to separate articles rather than deleted.
- Meet Trump’s memecoin dinner guests
Citation Needed reports that 73% of the 220 largest holders of Trump's $TRUMP memecoin on a public leaderboard are likely based outside the United States, with 23 of the top 25 "VIP" guests likely foreign entities. The leaderboard holders are invited to a May 22 private dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club, which the article says likely violates federal ethics laws barring presidents from exchanging access for money. The largest wallet, likely belonging to Justin Sun, holds a $16 million dinner ticket, and the article notes Sun's $75 million purchase of WLFI tokens from Trump's World Liberty Financial.
- World Tyranny Financial
The Trump family's World Liberty Financial is drawing scrutiny while US crypto enforcement has fallen to multi-decade lows. World Liberty pledged 5% of the WLFI token supply as collateral on the lending platform Dolomite and borrowed about $65 million in USD1 and $10 million in USDC, leaving Dolomite depositors unable to withdraw until the loan is repaid. Justin Sun says his $75 million investment remains frozen after World Liberty blocked his wallet in September 2025. The SEC reported 456 enforcement actions in fiscal 2025, down more than 20% from the prior year.
- Sam Bankman-Fried’s helicopter parents crash into federal court
Judge Lewis Kaplan has ordered Sam Bankman-Fried to declare under penalty of perjury whether attorneys drafted the pro se filings submitted under his name. Bankman-Fried's mother, Stanford law professor emerita Barbara Fried, filed a February motion for a new trial on his behalf, and Kaplan rebuked her on March 16 for lacking standing to file papers in the case. Prosecutors questioned a March 19 letter purportedly from Bankman-Fried, citing its FedEx tracking origin near Palo Alto, which is near his parents' home, and an "/s/" signature rather than an actual one. Bankman-Fried has until April 15 to respond.
- The world’s most corrupt crypto startup operation
Do Kwon, founder of the collapsed Terra/Luna project, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, three more than the twelve years prosecutors sought, and Judge Paul Engelmayer cited the scale of the fraud and its more than one million victims. The article describes Terra's May 2022 collapse, a $40 billion crash after the algorithmic stablecoin lost its dollar peg. It also reports that Kwon must serve at least half his sentence in the US before applying for transfer to South Korea, where he faces separate charges. Other items cover Paxful's $4 million fine, a Samourai Wallet cofounder's four-year sentence, and the OCC's conditional approval of five crypto trust bank charters.
- Digital asset treasury companies are running out of steam
Digital asset treasury companies (DATCOs), which hold crypto on their balance sheets and trade on public markets, are losing the premiums that once made them attractive, and the article warns that a forced unwind could be painful. MicroStrategy, now called Strategy, holds more than 650,000 bitcoin worth over $50 billion, yet its stock is down 60% and it has been trading at a narrowing premium. Nakamoto has fallen 98%, and many DATCOs now trade at a discount to their holdings. The author links the risk to debt maturities and forced sales, comparing it to the 1920s investment trust boom, as cited from Galaxy Digital researchers.
- Redefining solvency
Sam Bankman-Fried is seeking to overturn his conviction on all seven felony charges and his 25-year sentence, arguing that FTX was never insolvent and that Judge Kaplan wrongly barred him from discussing his lawyers' involvement. The three-judge appeals panel has not ruled, but its questions suggested skepticism, with judges noting that a crime is not absolved because victims are ultimately made whole. Elsewhere, the Tenth Circuit affirmed a 2–1 ruling rejecting Custodia Bank's bid for a Federal Reserve master account, and the Independent Community Bankers of America urged regulators to reject Coinbase's national trust bank charter application.
- The scam of all scams
The Trump family's World Liberty Financial token and related ventures have produced large gains and serious conflicts of interest, and the Wall Street Journal's "$5 billion fortune" headline overstates the figures, which are largely paper profits. The text estimates the family earned $412.5 million from early WLFI token sales, based on a 75% share of proceeds. World Liberty froze about 55 million tokens held by crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who had called his transfers exchange deposit tests. Nasdaq required Eric Trump to become a board observer at ALT5 Sigma.
- All the President’s tokens
Citation Needed's crypto recap for June 5, 2025, centers on the tangle of Trump-linked crypto projects, which the author says has produced confusion and conflict. After Magic Eden and the $TRUMP memecoin project announced an "Official $TRUMP Wallet by President Trump," Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump all disavowed the project, and Bloomberg reported that the Trump sons sent a cease-and-desist order via World Liberty Financial. The recap also covers the May 22 memecoin dinner, where attendees paid between $55,000 and nearly $38 million for seats and the event drove almost $150 million in token sales, along with court cases involving SafeMoon, Genesis and Avraham Eisenberg.
- No, Trump didn’t make $50 billion from his memecoin
Citation Needed argues that media reports of Donald Trump's memecoin making him worth $50 billion rely on flawed math, since "fully diluted valuation" multiplies the current token price by the maximum supply that may ever exist. The author notes that estimates for the $TRUMP token ranged from about $20 billion to $70 billion across newspapers, and that Axios and the New York Times were cited, with the Times putting the figure at $30 billion. Using the article's example, $TRUMP traded around $53 with 200 million tokens in circulation, a market cap of about $10.7 billion, while 1 billion tokens are set to be released over three years.
- Nice
Recent crypto legal developments include former FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh receiving a non-custodial sentence of three years of supervised release, the fourth of five FTX defendants sentenced. Ryan Salame, who pleaded guilty without cooperating, has begun a 7.5-year prison term, while Caroline Ellison received two years after cooperating. Craig Wright filed a new lawsuit without legal representation against Bitcoin Core developers and Block seeking £911 million ($1.18 billion), and the case was placed on hold pending a contempt hearing in the COPA case.
- Issue 63 – RobConf 2024
Molly White reports that she filed a Federal Election Commission complaint with Public Citizen alleging Coinbase violated campaign finance laws with a $25 million contribution to the Fairshake super PAC in May 2024, while Coinbase was actively negotiating contracts with a federal agency. Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal responded that Coinbase is not a federal contractor, a claim White says the filings already dispute. The newsletter also covers a Ripple ruling in which a judge fined the company $125 million, well below the $1 billion disgorgement the SEC had sought, and Genesis's plan to distribute around $4 billion to creditors.
- Follow the Crypto
Follow the Crypto is a new website that tracks cryptocurrency industry spending to influence the 2024 United States elections. According to OpenSecrets data cited in the piece, the industry has spent more on 2024 elections than the oil or pharmaceutical industries, and more than the entire energy sector, despite being worth less than $20 billion by generous estimates. Fairshake spent $10 million on attack ads against Katie Porter, who lost California's Democratic Senate primary, and the crypto super PACs hold more than $185 million combined. The site tracks contributions to and expenditures by crypto-focused super PACs, and its creator says spending is ramping up as elections approach.
- Issue 52 – I am Sam's low-level culpability
Bitcoin has risen above $60,000, approaching its all-time high of about $69,000 from November 2021, but the newsletter contends the crypto industry has yet to fix the major problems that have plagued the sector. Media coverage this time feels different, with the New York Times' only recent crypto mention describing Sam Bankman-Fried's hope for a six-year sentence. His defense has requested 63 to 78 months in prison, calling the 100-year sentence reportedly recommended in the unfiled pre-sentencing report "grotesque."
- Issue 51 – It's quiet... too quiet
Crypto incidents slowed sharply over the two weeks covered, with only four recorded, and renewed attacker interest is likely as bitcoin climbs past $50,000 and other prices follow. Bitcoin has not yet regained its November 2021 high above $60,000, though it is much closer than during the nearly two years of the "crypto winter." Other covered items include Craig Wright's UK court case over claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the New York Attorney General seeking $3 billion in restitution from Digital Currency Group, and Do Kwon's extradition delays in Montenegro.
- We need to talk about digital ownership
Digital ownership is used to mean many different things, so people should name the specific rights they mean. For consumers, the rights are ongoing access, availability, and resale, illustrated by Amazon's terms warning that purchased content "may become unavailable" and by online games that stop working when servers shut down. For creators, the rights are copyright, licensing, sellability, accessibility, portability, destructibility, and sovereignty, with sovereignty illustrated by a newsletter that moved from Substack while keeping its subscribers.
- Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost: the details
Citation Needed author Molly White describes migrating her newsletter from Substack to a self-hosted instance of the open source Ghost blogging software, and she argues that self-hosting was the best option for her. She cites Substack's 10% cut of subscriber payments, its ties to a16z through its Series A round, its restrictions on payment methods and recommendations, and its handling of Nazi newsletters as reasons to leave. She says she chose a $14/month DigitalOcean droplet for the site and Mailgun's $75/month Foundation 100k plan for email, which she reports cost $0.37 in overage fees for 100,366 emails sent in January.
- Citation Needed has a new home
Molly White announced that her Citation Needed newsletter has moved from Substack to its own self-hosted site, citationneeded.news, in January 2024. She left because Substack chose to keep hosting Nazi content, which she said conflicts with her values and the revenue she was sharing with the platform. White says the move is built on the Ghost open source platform, with Stripe handling payments and Mailgun handling email, and that Substack's 10% cut no longer applies. She reports that subscribers were moved over without needing to resubscribe.
- POSSE: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world
POSSE (Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) is presented as a short-term answer to the problem of social platforms dying or becoming untenable, with posts published first on a site the writer controls and then syndicated to other services. The author describes syndicating posts from a personal website to Twitter, Mastodon, and Bluesky, and says that if a platform shuts down, the posts remain live on the author's own site. The article also says POSSE expands publishing options beyond limits such as Bluesky's 300-character cap, but notes that replies stay siloed on each platform and that the software ecosystem around POSSE is thin.
- Trump’s $1.4 billion crypto disclosure
Molly White argues that Trump's latest financial disclosure, which reports more than $1.4 billion in income from his cryptocurrency businesses in 2025, reflects a conflict of interest in an industry his administration has deregulated. The bulk came from $635 million tied to a licensing agreement with Celebration Coins and $529 million from sales of World Liberty Financial's $WLFI token. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that neither the President nor his family has engaged in conflicts of interest.
- Crime szn bro
The Trump administration is cracking down on privacy software such as crypto mixers while loosening regulation for industry backers, as illustrated by the partial conviction of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. A jury found Storm guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carries a maximum of up to five years, and deadlocked on two other charges that carry twenty-year maximums. A White House cryptocurrency working group report recommends extending the Patriot Act to digital asset transactions, and the SEC is running "Project Crypto," described as a "deregulation blitz." Samourai Wallet developers pleaded guilty to one count each and agreed to forfeit a combined $238 million.
- Curate your own newspaper with RSS
The article argues that RSS lets readers build a personal, privacy-friendlier "newspaper" from the writers and sites they already follow, avoiding the decay of platforms and the clutter of newsletter inboxes. It explains that RSS has existed for 25 years, that Google Reader's 2013 shutdown left many readers without a central tool, and that almost any website with a feed can be followed in one feed reader. The author says they use Inoreader, which has a generous free tier, and describes folders for paid subscriptions, newsletters, news and food blogs.
- Absolutely preposterous
Trump launched the $TRUMP memecoin shortly before his inauguration, prompting criticism from some crypto supporters, and early actions of the new administration point to what crypto policy may look like over the next four years. Crypto venture capitalist Nic Carter told Politico that "It's absolutely preposterous that he would do this," while Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) wrote that elected officials must be barred from having memecoins by law. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) wrote a letter to government agencies about conflicts of interest raised by the $TRUMP and $MELANIA tokens. The article also reports that Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, on day two of his term, as a thank you to the Libertarian movement.
- Issue 59 – Hot damn, this is going to get interesting quickly
The article is a June 2024 crypto news recap that opens with the SEC's surprise approval of Ethereum spot ETP applications, made on May 23 after a period of delays. It notes that the reasons for the approval are unclear, and that some have described it as part of a broader softening toward crypto by US lawmakers and regulators. Other items include Ryan Salame's 90-month sentence on May 28 for his FTX-related charges, and a $1.8 million legal fee award against the SEC in the Debt Box case.
- Issue 58 – Threats to the stability and integrity of Ethereum
A crypto industry roundup reports that Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to 64 months in prison in the Netherlands over Tornado Cash, and that Ryan Salame asked for no more than 18 months before his May 28 sentencing. Prosecutors charging two brothers over an attack on Ethereum MEV bots wrote that tampering with MEV-Boost threatens the stability and integrity of the Ethereum blockchain. Other items include Aiden Pleterski's arrest on fraud and money laundering charges and a class action by Luke Brown against Dolce & Gabbana over its DGFamily NFTs, which Brown says cost him $6,000.
- The Clarity Act collapses
The Clarity Act, the flagship crypto market structure bill, collapsed when a cloture vote fell well short of the 60 votes needed, with not a single Democrat voting for it. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was among the Democrats opposing it, and Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) were among the Republicans who broke with their party. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) blamed Democrats in a CoinDesk op-ed, while Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) blamed Republicans. The article also reports that the SEC issued an "Innovation Exemption" for tokenized securities venues, which critics such as Better Markets condemned.
- The Senate must reject the Clarity Act’s ethics charade
The author argues that the Senate should reject the Clarity Act's ethics provisions before a cloture vote, calling them a charade that exempts President Trump's crypto businesses and leaves enforcement to his loyalists. The article says the new draft removes an earlier sunset provision and raises penalties above the $500,000 cap, but state attorneys general still cannot bring enforcement actions against the president or other officials. It also says the definitions of prohibited activity, including the "significant financial interest" and "sponsorship" language, were drafted to exclude Trump's ventures, and that about $1.2 billion of his $1.4 billion crypto income from last year was already received. Senator Lummis has described the draft as unprecedented ethics restrictions.
- Reg Crypto
The SEC has proposed "Regulation Crypto," a 400-page rule that would reduce disclosure and reporting requirements for crypto issuers through exemptions and safe harbors, while the CFTC has invoked emergency authority in its dispute with states over prediction markets. The article also reports that World Liberty Financial, a Trump family crypto business, won a conditional bank charter from the OCC, which the article says is led by Trump appointee Jonathan Gould. According to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE owns 49% of the bank's holding entity, compared with the Trump family's 38%.
- An unserious offer
The Clarity Act, a crypto market structure bill, appears close to dead after Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) called the White House-endorsed ethics compromise "an unserious offer." The compromise would bar the president and members of Congress from issuing cryptocurrencies, but it expires January 20, 2029, is enforced by a Justice Department headed by Todd Blanche, a former Trump lawyer, and caps fines at $500,000. The article reports that the crypto industry has spent $200 million since 2024, and that Trump disclosed $1.4 billion in crypto income last year.
- A tremendous birthday present
Reuters reported that the Trump family has profited $2.3 billion from its crypto ventures while investors lost a similar $2.3 billion, according to Reuters' estimates, and this newsletter's author helped with that report. The author highlights a machinist who lost $32,700, 79% of his investment in ALT5 Sigma, a Trump-linked treasury company. The newsletter also reports that ALT5 Sigma, which renamed itself AI Financial, disclosed substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, and that its $WLFI token price fell more than 40%.
- The new boogeyman
Justin Sun and World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto project, have filed dueling lawsuits against each other. Sun filed a May 5 suit in a California federal court alleging that World Liberty vindictively froze his $WLFI tokens after he refused to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more, and that the project secretly retained freeze powers despite marketing itself as decentralized. World Liberty filed a May 4 defamation suit in a Florida state court over Sun's tweets, arguing that the freeze authority was clearly disclosed in agreements and smart contracts, and it also intends to force Sun into arbitration on his California claims.
- Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin is preparing to launch a “Coin Club” membership scheme
The $TRUMP memecoin project is preparing to launch a "$TRUMP Coin Club," a membership scheme whose website describes "invitation-only luxury suites at the biggest sporting events in the world, private dinners, and the most elite and extraordinary experiences." The club has not launched yet, and its website shows a token holder leaderboard that the author says appears designed to rank members by the amount and duration of their holdings, despite fine print stating that no holdings are required. The token is reported to be down 97% from its peak, and the author expects the new club to draw scrutiny like earlier events, which Congressional Democrats have already criticized.
- No new trial for Sam Bankman-Fried
Judge Lewis Kaplan has denied Sam Bankman-Fried's motion for a new trial and refused to let him withdraw it, a ruling that closes off what was likely his last realistic route to avoid his 25-year sentence apart from his pending appeal to the Second Circuit. Kaplan wrote that Bankman-Fried wanted to keep the right to refile the motion later, possibly after key trial-record witnesses were no longer available. The ruling also criticized a reputation-rebuilding plan Bankman-Fried wrote before he was indicted, saying his supposedly new facts had been seen before at trial.
- The President’s Council of Podcasters
Coinbase is accused of holding the crypto industry hostage over stablecoin rewards in the Clarity Act, while Medjedovic, a wanted crypto fugitive, reportedly seeks a presidential pardon. Two lobbyists, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, were paid a $300,000 retainer to pursue the pardon, according to a February Foreign Agents Registration filing. Arca executive Jeff Dorman wrote on Twitter that Coinbase is "still holding the whole industry hostage," and Delphi Digital co-founder Tommy Shaughnessy urged a compromise before Democrats potentially retake the House.
- The public will pay
The SEC settled its fraud case against Justin Sun for $10 million with no admission of wrongdoing, after Sun committed $223 million to Trump family crypto ventures. The fine under the Securities Act of 1933 implies the SEC treats Sun's TRX and BTT tokens as securities, which could mean exchanges listing them are operating as unregistered securities exchanges. Kraken has become the first crypto firm to gain a Federal Reserve master account, and Binance called Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Fortune reporting on Iran-linked transfers "demonstrably false."
- Bought and paid for
Newly released Epstein files show numerous crypto figures corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein, including Tether co-founder Brock Pierce, whose emails with Epstein went well beyond the "few communications" his spokesperson had earlier described. Epstein invested $3 million in Coinbase's series C, and emails show he also invested in Blockstream in 2014 through a fund associated with Joi Ito. Elsewhere, Bitcoin has fallen 50% from its October highs, Gemini laid off 25% of its workforce, and the administrator winding down Terraform Labs sued Jane Street over alleged misuse of insider information.
- Crypto super PACs have hundreds of millions ready to spend on the midterms
Crypto industry groups have spent at least $288 million on the 2026 midterms, more than double their spending in the entire 2024 cycle, according to the article. Pro-crypto super PACs held $221 million in unspent cash, with another $100 million claimed by the Fellowship PAC but not yet shown in official filings. Direct contributions from crypto companies and executives have gone 92% to Republicans, and Fairshake's top donors include Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz.