38 Burst results for "District Court"
CoinDesk Podcast Network
SPECIAL REPORT: SBF TRIAL 09/22 Update
"Welcome to the SBF trial, a Coindesk podcast network newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman -Fried will try to stay out of prison. Follow the Coindesk podcast network to get the audio each morning with content from the Coindesk regulation team and voiced by Wondercraft AI. Yesterday was arguably not a great day for Sam Bankman -Fried. First, the judge overseeing his case rejected all seven of his proposed expert witnesses, questioning at least one's qualifications and saying some others really wouldn't be relevant to the case. Shortly after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bankman -Fried's appeal of Judge Lewis Kaplan's ruling to revoke his release on bail. These are both mostly procedural losses. I don't think the appeal denial is a surprise to anyone. Judge Kaplan even joked about his record on appeals in the August 11th hearing where he remanded Bankman -Fried into custody, and indeed the three -judge panel wrote that they discerned no error, much less clear error, in the district court's detention decision. What this means is Bankman -Fried will remain behind bars as his trial begins. Judge Kaplan's ruling is a lot more interesting. On the face of it, yes, he granted the Department of Justice's motion to bar all of the defense's proposed expert witnesses from testifying. But this is more of a mixed bag. The defense can still try and call for the witnesses provided they fill out better disclosures at least three days before they're supposed to testify. The DOJ can still object to the witnesses as well. We already know the DOJ plans to call witnesses as soon as the week of October 3rd, and while we haven't seen a full or final list of witnesses, we do now have some greater clarity about who we can expect to testify over the course of the trial. Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, an FBI agent, and Peter Easton, a University of Notre Dame professor who will apparently explain FTX's financials, for starters. If the defense successfully calls them up, we may also hear from Thomas Bishop to rebut what Easton says, Brian Kim who may rebut the FBI agent's statements, and Joseph Pimbly to respond to a DOJ witness on FTX's software.
Bloomberg Law
Fresh update on "district court" discussed on Bloomberg Law
"Seem to be wrestling with the issues here are judges kelman and karmit like this gender identity is clearly very important to everyone and there are things many that happen in school every day that would qualify as less important than that so do you really see no limiting principle between something like the gender identity of your child and you know who your child may have played with during recess that day are you really saying there's no difference there but you seem to be asserting bottom line that the rights of the student to preclude disclosure of this request to use pronouns trumps the right of the parents to know what's going on with respect to the child's gender identity that bottom you are certain that aren't you joining these audrey anderson head of the higher education practice at bass arian sims audrey explain what the parents are suing here cool where their children middle schoolers attended have a policy that's not an policy that says if the students come to personnel in the school and say they that want to change their name change their pronoun to the opposite gender that they were born into the school will work with them to do that and also will keep that information from the student parent if the student asked for it to be kept from their parents so the parents here were aware that one of their children was experiencing questions some about their gender and actually reached out to the school proactively to say we don't want you to talk to our child about this and the school nevertheless behind the parents backs talk to the child started calling the child by a different name use different pronouns and the parents understandably were very upset about this what surprises me about this is that at that age if your kid seems aggressive gets into fight a with someone the teachers are on the phone are calling you in and yet they don't want to tell them about this very important aspect of their kids life the countervailing policy decision here and I think one reason why the parents are going to have a particularly hard time winning this case is that there's a Massachusetts law that requires schools to not discriminate against students because of their gender identity and so this school has decided that in order to carry out that duty they need to keep that information about the student private if the student asks for it to be private so the school district here says well we have this state law that says we are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and there are some students for which it won't be safe for them at home if their parents know that they are going by a different gender identity it may become psychologically unsafe for them at home so that's the countervailing thing and why this is different in the whole from mind your child got in a fight or your child threw up at school or all the other things that happen to kids at school that the school does tell parents about. Did the school just call the child by preferred pronouns or did the school do more than that? also They had somebody at the school meet with the child regularly to talk to them about how they were feeling and be a resource person for them and the parents here alleged that in that way they were actually giving mental health treatment to their child without the parents consent. Now the district court found that they hadn't adequately alleged acts to support a conclusion that the child was receiving mental health treatment so the district court kind of threw that out based on the factual allegation. The district court used a standard a very tough standard shocking the conscience. Tell us what that standard is and is it appropriate in this case is it the correct standard in this case? Well yes the parents here are alleging that their substantive due process rights were violated and the court I think used the right standard to figure that out you know the parents in the court of appeals have said that the district court kind of made that standard extra tough but the cases I've looked at seem to require that the facts alleged really have to shock the conscience and they're usually looking for something where the state actor has intentionally inflicted harm on the person who is suing so you know one of the cases I saw where there actually was substantive due process adequately alleged was where a school coach had intentionally used a hard object to hit a student in the face that shocked the conscience but there's lots of things where students are hurt where it might be upsetting but it doesn't reach that shock the conscience standard and substantive due process is a very tricky legal standard that lots of judges think should be described that there should be very few things that we find are protected by substantive due process so what's established is the right to marry the right to have children so they want want to keep to the range of things that are within substantive due process really small now the parents current say that what's within substantive due process is the right to raise your children as you see fit. the thing they run into there is that there are supreme court cases that support that but what they support is the right to raise your children as you see fit in a private school setting so to me those cases only say that these parents have a right to send their children to a school that would not have a policy like that I think it's much harder to say that within the public school they get to have a right to say what the policy is on something like that here's my caveat I'm surprised that they haven't raised a religious argument I think that they'd have a stronger argument if they were also raising some kind of a free exercise argument that our religion also supports the idea that you are the gender that you're born into and so for you to be teaching our child something other than that and supporting them transitioning when we've told you not to violate our our religious rights but they haven't argued that in this case so this first circuit decision will be the highest court ruling on the merits of this argument there's a case before the 11th circuit which is very conservative so there might end up being some kind of split in the circuits yeah I definitely agree with that I think that this is an issue that some conservative court will find that at least a complaint can go forward and then the question will be whether the Supreme Court gets interested enough at that point or whether they want a case with a little bit more factual development something that goes to a summary judgment motion at least or maybe even a trial before they decide to weigh in on this you know when the Supreme Court if when the Supreme Court weighs into this I think that some of the justices will have a hard time because the conservative side of the Supreme Court wants very much to have a very very narrow set of circumstances where substantive due process protects rights and Justice Thomas doesn't think that there is such a thing as substantive due process on the other hand I would believe them to be very concerned about these kind of school policies so how they will thread that needle I think will be very interesting well certainly this case is being watched nationally there more were than a hundred amicus briefs filed including from 19 states that supported the parents position and 15 states that supported the school's position so we'll see other first rules thanks so much Audrey that's Audrey Anderson head of the higher education practice at bass airy and sims coming up next the lawsuit start over ineffective Bloomberg the business news together we have the opportunity to build a more sustainable and inclusive future at the Bloomberg new economy forum we help make this possibility a reality by cultivating new connections among global leaders that transcend geographies industries and ideologies because when global leaders work together the outcomes benefit all of us learn more at bloombergneweconomy .com when professional soccer player Marcus Rashford injured his shoulder he turned to results virtual reality sports training program results technology has helped him and athletes of all levels maintain their skills while recovering from injuries so that they can return to the field with confidence Rashford says after my shoulder injury resol vr was key to my training and helped me get back to the game these are the ways athletes are using the metaverse today learn more
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 668:SECs AI Dragnet and Ripples Courtroom Win
"Why do tacos get their own day of the week? Is it because Mondays are so rough, we need a Tuesday filled with beefy tortillas shared with good friends? If so, why don't we have Wellington Wednesdays stroganoff Saturdays, and heck, beefball Mondays? Then Mondays would just be another reason to enjoy our favorite beef with our favorite people. Together, we bring more. Beef, it's what's for dinner, funded by beef farmers and ranchers. Good evening, and welcome to the Crypto Overnighter. I'm Nick Ademus, and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Wednesday, September 13th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnighter, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight, we dig into the SEC's AI surveillance plans led by Gary Gensler. What does that mean for privacy and regulation? Ripple scores a point in court, but what's the real cost? OneCoin's co -founder faces 20 years behind bars, a reminder to always do your due diligence. Craig Wright dodges criminal sanctions, but raises questions about legal loopholes in crypto. North Korea's Lazarus Group makes another appearance, this time targeting Coinex for a cool $55 million. And finally, Coinbase is lighting up Bitcoin transactions by integrating the Lightning Network. Gary Gensler confirmed the U .S. Securities Exchange Commission uses artificial intelligence for financial surveillance. This revelation came during a Senate oversight hearing on September 12th. Gensler stated that the SEC uses AI technologies to monitor the financial sector for signs of fraud and manipulation. The SEC has not issued a formal public declaration detailing the use of AI. Gensler also faced criticism for the SEC's rulemaking pace and duration of comment periods. He remains adamant that crypto trading platforms should adhere to rigorous U .S. securities regulations. The SEC chair argues that most crypto tokens will likely pass the investment contract test. Gensler cited noncompliance with securities laws in the crypto industry, leading to the agency's enforcement approach. He also mentioned that the SEC has filed approximately 750 enforcement actions in the last year. Gensler warned that AI's ability to generate deepfake content poses a genuine threat to financial markets. He defended the SEC's key rulemaking initiatives amid heavy pushback from lawmakers. The SEC aims to bring DeFi under its jurisdiction, stating that existing rules also apply to the crypto sector. The SEC's adoption of AI for financial surveillance is a significant development. It's a clear signal that the regulatory body is doubling down on its efforts to monitor and control the crypto space. This move aligns with Gensler's consistent stance that the crypto industry should fall under the same regulatory frameworks as traditional financial markets. The use of AI could potentially tighten the noose around crypto activities, making it more challenging for traders and investors to operate freely. While the technology can be a powerful tool for detecting fraud and manipulation, it also raises concerns about privacy and the extent of government surveillance. Gensler's warning about the potential for AI -generated deepfake content adds another layer of complexity. It suggests that the SEC is not only looking to regulate, but also to protect the market from new types of threats. However, Gensler's approach has not been without its critics. The pace of rulemaking and the lack of clarity have drawn ire from both the crypto community and lawmakers. The SEC's aggressive enforcement actions, totaling around 750 in the last year, indicate a strategy of regulation by enforcement, which many find to be problematic. Now, if you're worried about Big Brother and C3PO teaming up to watch your every move, don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe. So now, let's pivot from surveillance to legal battles. Ripple is scoring in court. What does that mean for crypto and regulation? Ripple is in the midst of a legal battle with the SEC. The SEC initially accused Ripple of violating federal securities laws by selling its native cryptocurrency, XRP, without registering it as a security. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and President Monica Long have been vocal about their intent to fight the SEC all the way through. The company has already spent over $100 million defending the case. A significant ruling came in July when US District Court Judge Analisa Torres stated that XRP was not necessarily a security. This opened the doors for Ripple to expand its business not just in the US, but globally. The SEC requested permission to file an interlocutory appeal against this ruling, but as for now, the request has yet to be decided upon. Ripple is also focusing 80 % of its hiring efforts outside the US, targeting markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, and Dubai. The ongoing Ripple vs SEC case is a test for the crypto industry's relationship with regulators. Ripple's refusal to back down sends a strong message to the SEC and other regulatory bodies that the crypto industry will not be bullied. The SEC's actions here are part of a broader crackdown on the crypto industry. Frankly, I see it as an overreach of authority. The recent court ruling in favor of Ripple has not only given the company a legal upper hand, it also provided a glimmer of hope for the broader crypto ecosystem. It challenges the SEC's narrative and could set a precedent for other cases. The fact that Ripple is planning to focus its hiring outside the US is a clear sign of how regulatory uncertainty is driving crypto innovation away from the US, a point that should concern US policymakers. The case is shaping up to be a defining moment for crypto regulation in the US. It could have far reaching implications for the industry at large. And really, this whole thing is about the future of crypto regulation and the limits of governmental oversight. A point for Ripple, but at what cost? Make sure you're following us to stay updated on this legal thriller. But speaking of costs, some people are paying dearly. From courtrooms to prison cells, let's delve into the dark underbelly of crypto scams with OneCoin's co -founder, Carl Greenwood.
Bloomberg Law
Fresh update on "district court" discussed on Bloomberg Law
"Emerging legal battle over pronoun protocol in public schools has nothing do to with grammar and everything to do with gender identity some parents are suing schools that keep their children's use of new pronouns secret claiming it's a violation of their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children the ledlow massachusetts school committee is being sued over a teacher's failure to notify parents that their eleven -year -old began using different preferred pronouns a federal judge dismissed the parents complaint but the first circuit court of appeals could vive it and in oral arguments the judges seem to be wrestling with the issues here are judges iraqi min and carmen like this in gender identity is clearly very important to everyone and are there many things that happen in school every day that would qualify as less important than that so do you really see no limiting principle between something like the gender identity of your child and you know who your child may have played with during recess that day are you really saying there's no difference there you seem to be asserting bottom line that the rights of the student to preclude of disclosure this request to use pronouns trumps the right right of the parents to know what's going on with respect to the child's gender identity that online you are asserting that aren't you joining me is audrey anderson head of the higher education practice at asparian sims audrey explain why the parents are suing here the school aware their children middle schoolers attended have a policy that's not an usual that policy says if the students come to personnel in the school and say that they want to change their name change their pronoun to the opposite that gender that they were born into the school work with them to do that and also will we'll keep that information from the students parents if the students ask for it to be kept from their parents so the parents here were aware that one of their children was some experiencing questions about their gender and actually reached out to the school proactively to say we don't want you to talk to our child about this and the school nevertheless behind the parents backs talk to the child started calling the child by a different name use different pronouns and the parents understandably were very upset about this what surprises me about this is that at that age if your kid seems aggressive gets into a fight with someone the teachers are on the phone are calling you in and yet they don't want to tell them this very important aspect of their kids life the countervailing policy decision here and i think one reason why the parents are going to have a particularly hard time winning this case is that there's a massachusetts law that requires schools cannot discriminate against students because of their gender identity and so this all has decided that in order to carry out that duty they need to keep that information about the student private if the student asks for it to be private so so the school district here says well we have this state law that says we are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and there are some students for which it won't be safe for them at home if their parents know that they are going by a different gender identity it may become psychologically unsafe for them at home so that's the countervailing thing and why this is different in the school's mind from your child got in a fight or your child threw up at school or all the other things that happen to kids at school that the school does tell parents about to the school just call the child by preferred pronouns or did the school do more than that they they also had somebody at the school meet with the child regularly to talk to them about how they were feeling and be a resource person for them and the parents here allege that in that way they were actually giving mental health treatment to their child without the parents consent now the district court found that they hadn't adequately alleged facts to support a conclusion that the child was receiving mental health treatment so the district court kind of threw that out based on the factual allegations the district court used a standard a very tough standard shocking the conscience tell us what that standard is and is it appropriate in this case is it the correct standard in this case? well yes the parents here are alleging that their substantive due process rights were violated and the court I think used the right standard to figure that out you know the parents in the court of appeals have said that the district court kind of made that standard extra tough but the cases I've looked at seem to require that the facts alleged really have to shock the conscience and they're usually looking for something where the state actor has intentionally inflicted harm on the person who is suing so you know one of the cases I saw where there actually was substantive due process adequately alleged was where a school coach had intentionally used a hard object to hit a student in the face that shocked the the but conscience there's lots of things where students are hurt where it might be upsetting but it doesn't reach that shock the conscience standard and substantive due process is a very tricky legal standard that lots of judges think should be transcribed that there should be very few things that we find are protected by substantive due process so what's established is the right to marry the right to have children so they want to keep the range of things that are within substantive due process really small now the parents say that what was within substantive due process is the right to raise your children as you see fit the thing they run into there is that there are supreme court cases that support that but what they support is the right to raise your children as you see fit in a private school setting so to me those cases only say that these parents have a right to send their children to a school that would not have a policy like that I think it's much harder to say that within the public schools they get to have a right to say what the is policy on something like this here's my caveat I'm surprised that they haven't raised a religious argument I think that they'd have a stronger argument if they were also raising some kind of a free exercise argument that our religion also supports the idea that you are the gender that you're born into and so for you to be teaching our child something other than that and supporting them transitioning when we've told you not to violate our religious rights but they haven't argued that in this case so this First Circuit decision will be the highest court ruling on the merits of this argument there's a case before the 11th Circuit which is very conservative so there might end up being some kind of split in the circuits. Yeah I definitely agree with that I think that this is an issue that some conservative court will that find at least a complaint can go forward and then the question will be whether the Supreme Court gets interested enough at that point or whether they want a case with a little bit more factual development something that goes to a summary judgment motion at least or maybe even a trial before they decide to weigh in on this you know when the Supreme Court if when the Supreme Court weighs into this I think that some of the justices will have a hard time because the conservative side of the Supreme Court wants very much to have a very very narrow set of where circumstances substantive due process protects right and Justice Thomas doesn't think that there is such a thing as substantive due process on the other hand I would believe them to be very about concerned these kind of school policies so how they will thread that needle I will think be very interesting well certainly this case is being watched nationally there were more than a hundred amicus briefs filed including from 19 states that supported the parents position and 15 states that supported the school's position so we'll see other first circuit rules thanks so much audrey that's audrey anderson head of the higher education practice at ask fast berry and sims coming up next the lawsuit start over ineffective this is bloomberg zoe hoker is a welder who practices his craft in the universe with forge fx's virtual training platform he says virtual welding lets me much train as as i want increasing my skills and access to opportunity through tulsa welding school zoe and other welders can use forge fx's platform to up level their expertise and answer the need for more skilled workers in today's economy these are the ways skilled professionals are using the
Mark Levin
Peter Navarro Speaks Out on Partisan Weaponization by Biden Regime
"The Department of Justice says no you can't do that and presidents since George Washington have exerted executive privilege and so that's what's at stake here and executive privilege is important because as the Supreme Court has rules and OLC the Department of Justice has said it's important for confidential decision -making to take place in the White House and at the root of that mark is the constitutional separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch so that's what this this case is about what you think about this mark is I am literally the first senior White House advisor in the history of our Republic to be charged with this alleged crime and what what it to symbolizes me and I hope to your listeners is that it's the poster child for the weaponization the partisan weaponization of the House and the Department of Justice by the Biden regime the Democrats for use to punish political rivals so I'm standing tall on this I'm standing on principle we lost the case at district court but what we did was a beautiful job in laying the groundwork for the appeals process and what was so interesting marks so interesting to me going in because I never ever gone through stuff this before it's like expensive it's grueling it's like this judge I go in I've got eight different defenses possible who's the judge included I don't want to I don't want to criticize the judge okay I'll look it up I'm at Mehta did okay he what he believed was right right but one of the things
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
Fresh update on "district court" discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"And welcome everyone just joining us. This is pod episode number 1409. I'm your host JV. Today is September 22nd, 2023. Let's kick off today's show with our market watch as we do here every day. We can see Bitcoin back in the red, but holding on to 26,500 as support and checking out coinmarketcap.com the crypto market caps, it's just above that trillion dollar milestone with roughly 22 billion in volume in the past 24 hours with the volume down 25% as Bitcoin dominance is currently at 49.1% with the ether dominance at 18.2% as Bitcoin Dom has been dominating the ether dominance. And I think it's likely to continue this cycle, but what are your thoughts, fam and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, lo and behold, the infamous pepe coin that is rated number 100 is leading the pack of 15% for the day, followed by curved out token up almost 11% trading above 49 and a half cents, followed by Zilliqa up almost 4% trading at roughly 1.7 cents and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past week. We have XRD up 7.4%. We got CRV up 11.7% and FTT, the infamous scam token that Sam Bankman freed created on the FTX exchange currently up 5.3% and checking out the crypto greed and fear index we're currently rated a 43 fear yesterday, 47 neutral last week, 45 fear and last month of 37 in fear. So there you have it, fam. How many of you have been taken advantage of this recent dip? Let me know. And now let's dive into the technical analysis for Bitcoin. Check out the charts and what is popping with the king crypto Bitcoin circle lower after September 21st, wall street open as 20,000 Bitcoin price predictions resurface. You got to keep in mind there's a CME futures gap at approximately that level as well. Now data from coin Telegraph and trading view covered a lackluster 24 hours for the price action of Bitcoin with 27,000 fading from the view. The aftermath of the US fed interest rates pause offered a little for the Bitcoin bulls having dipped almost $700 of the prior day. Now market participants returned to a more conservative outlook in the absence of the tangible volatility quitting crypto Tony here, something like this over the course of October would be perfect. I would say slow grind up to 28,500 followed by hype and FOMO fear of missing out to then dump it once more. And then we have another analyst material indicators. Meanwhile eyeing a so-called death cross on the weekly chart, quitting him here, the 21 week and 200 week moving averages on a collision course for a death cross on the Bitcoin weekly candle closed and open at warrant. Now he also says that the 50 week moving average may provide some temporary support and even trigger a short term rally. But if pa takes us there, it'll print a lower low, which I believe opens the door to a grind down to test 20,000. Let me know if you agree, disagree with the analysts now also shares here. If there is a base case for hopium, it's that the FTX liquidators don't want to see much price erosion before they start distributing and may try to prop the price up for a little longer. That's purely speculative, but not out of the realm of possibilities. Now another analyst crypto con shares the following doesn't get much simpler than this Bitcoin early and late bull market is green. The bear market ends in the red. I mean, as he outlines here alongside this chart and just as confident was fellow trader jelly who suspected a prime buying opportunity for prospective Bitcoin investors at these current prices. As he shows here on X historically, the post bottom consolidation phase has been a great time to buy. I don't think this time will be different. So there you have it. Fam now Bitcoin trading at around 26,500 at the time of this recording, making September gains equal to roughly two and a half percent. Still Bitcoin's best month since 2016 for the September and per data from monitoring resource coin glass Bitcoin delivered losses every single September since. So will this be the oddity this month of September as we're still potentially in the green and we can end in the green? Let me know your thoughts, fam. Welcome to everyone in the live chat. Now this was breaking news. Senator who said Bitcoin can open the doors of corruption in El Salvador was indicted for corruption by the federal prosecutors seizing 100,000 in gold bars and $480,000 in hidden cash from his home. So Max responded to this con artist and wrote gold is the poor man's Bitcoin. It encourages thievery, war, violence, and excess stupidity like Peter Schiff and Nassim Taleb, both who turned down my offer free Bitcoin at $1 in 2011 preach and massive shout out to Max Kaiser, Stacey Herbert, and Nigel Bokele of El Salvador. So there you have it, fam. Now let's discuss this hyperinflation, which continues to go on in Argentina as Bitcoin prices reach yet another all time high in their country. Let's break this baby down and shout out to all my fam in Latin America. I mean, we must continue to rise up. What will be the next Latin American country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender? Could it be Argentina? Could it be Mexico? Could it be Brazil? What's your thoughts, fam? Let me know in the chat. I'll read everyone's comments out loud at the end of the show. So here we go. Argentina has grappled with hyperinflation for several decades due to failed policies that have led to budget deficits. And as time marches on the likelihood of Argentina, home to 47 million people facing a full scale currency collapse looms. But there are prospects for increased adoption of Bitcoin, given its outstanding track record when priced in the local Argentine peso currency. That's right. Throughout history, the Argentine government has frequently resorted to inflating the money supplied through bank deposits or government bonds. And more notably, Argentina's aggregate money supply, the M1 comprising of currency, demand deposits and other checkable deposits have surged from 2.81 trillion pesos in July of 2019 to a staggering 10.66 trillion pesos, making a 277% increase in just three years. Just a reflection of what could happen to the US dollar, fam. Don't think it can happen in your own backyard. Now, the Bitcoin price on domestic exchanges has soared to 19.6 million Argentine pesos, up from 14.2 million when Bitcoin reached its all time high in the United States back in November of 2021. This means that despite the 61.5% drop from 69,000, investors in Argentina have still managed to accrue gains of 38% when measured in their local currency. And in this chart shows you the Bitcoin price in pesos at the Bitso exchange. Now, one may encounter a different result when consulting Google or CoinMarketCap for the Bitcoin price in pesos. Keep this in mind. The answer to the discrepancy lies in the official currency rate for the Argentine peso, which is more intricate than most investors are accustomed to. To begin with, there is the official rate, known as the dollar BNA, set by Argentina's central bank and used for all the government transactions as well as for imports and exports. Observe how the price in Bitcoin is in Argentine pesos, effectively traded on crypto exchanges, which is nearly double Google's theoretical price. This theoretical price is calculated by multiplying the Bitcoin price on the North American exchanges in the United States' dollars by the official Argentine peso rate provided by their local government. This phenomenon is not unique to cryptocurrency. It also affects other highly liquid international assets such as stocks, gold, and oil futures. So by artificially strengthening the official rate in favor of the Argentine peso, the government aims to stabilize the economy, reduce capital flight, and curb speculative trading by making it more expensive to purchase foreign currency and store wealth in US dollars. This measure may also increase the cost of imports while boosting exports with the goal of improving the trade balance. However, it's important to note that manipulating the official foreign exchange rate as seen in Argentina's case ultimately contributes to massive inflation and impedes their economic growth. Firstly, it creates incentives for the existence of an unofficial and unregistered market known as the dollar blue, which also fosters illegal activities, undermining financial transparency and discouraging foreign investment. This leads to varying exchange rates depending upon the market in which the transaction occurs and whether or not it involves the government as well as official banks. Now for the million dollar question, is Bitcoin a reliable store of value for investors right now in Argentina? Let's discuss it. According to Bitso Exchange Prices in Argentine pesos, Bitcoin has gained 150% over the two years ending September 21st, moving from 7.84 million pesos to 16.6 million pesos. However, the accumulated official inflation rate during this period had exceeded 300%, making it incorrect to claim that Bitcoin has been a dependable store of value. However, those who opted for US dollars, whether in the traditional form or in stable coins, have seen their holdings increased by 297% during the same period, effectively matching the inflation rate. This analysis exclusively compares the two year period between September 2021 and September 2023, virtually the past 24 months. Now, nonetheless, the outcome is somewhat disappointing for Bitcoin proponents and is likely to favor the adoption of stable coins in the region. But on a positive note, investors have had the opportunity to learn about the advantages of self custody and scarcity given that the local currency has been decimated by continuously inflating supply. So in the end for Argentinas, as long as the US dollar maintains its purchasing power by keeping pace with local inflation, there is little room for Bitcoin to become the preferred store of value. So there you have it. How do you think this is likely to play out for Argentina as hyperinflation continues? Literally, as Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Javier Malay, pro presidential candidate who's currently leading the polls and they say there's roughly a 77% chance that he becomes president and there is the opportunity. He adopts Bitcoin as the legal tender. He says when locals in Argentina go out to eat, they have to have stacks of money just to cover the bill because that's how bad their local currency has hyperinflated. So can Bitcoin save their economy? Literally over 40 million people. Let me know your honest thoughts, fam. I think it's only a matter of time and a sign of the times that Bitcoin is the answer to solve this economic crisis which continues around the world. And with that being shared, now let's break down our next story of the day, discuss the latest ongoing saga between Binance and their CEO, CZ, as well as the SEC. I don't know why I put SEO here on the chart. We talking about search engine optimization or the Securities and Exchange Commission. Just saying. Anyways, according to a September 21st filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, both Binance Holdings and CZ claimed that the SEC overstepped its authority and the lawsuit against them in the 60-page petition the lawyers for Binance and CZ accused the SEC of failing to introduce clear guidelines for the sector ahead of its lawsuit against the crypto exchange. And as we know, it's the largest crypto exchange in the world, hence why they're probably being attacked and as a result had imposed its regulatory authority over the crypto sector retroactively as outlined right here in this complaint, quoting them here, the SEC pursues these novel theories retroactively seeking to impose liability for sales crypto assets that occurred as far back as July of 2017 before the SEC provided any public guidance concerning cryptocurrency. They also shared it's clear that the SEC's lawsuit has no foundation in the currently enacted security laws. So moreover, reach in with your thoughts, fam. Lawyers for Binance also asserted that the regulatory fundamental misinterprets the security laws and their application to crypto assets, quitting him again and attempting to claim the regulatory power over the crypto industry. Additionally, the SEC distorts the text of the security laws. And in addition to Binance and CZ's petition, the American outfit of the crypto exchange, which is Binance US, legally known as BAM Trading Services, also reportedly sought the dismissal of charges in a separate 56-page filing made on the same day. The SEC sued Binance and its affiliates on June 5th, pressing charges claiming Binance offers the sale of unregistered securities and operates illegally within the United States. The SEC's move against Binance came three months after the CFTC also sued Binance for failing to register with it and for breaking many of its guidelines, you know, opposably. Now trading activity on Binance US has been hit hard as a result by the ongoing regulatory action against the exchange, with daily trading volumes slumping more than 98% from September 2022. On September 13th, Binance US laid off 30% of its remaining workforce with its president and CEO, Brian Schroeder, also departing from the firm. So there you have it. I mean, it's obviously no joke when you have the CFTC and the SEC and all the regulators in the United States basically crying wolf and blaming Binance and CZ for selling unregistered securities and the list goes on and on. Obviously, they've been around for the longest amount of time as the biggest crypto exchange in the world. So I don't think the SEC is going to get away with it, but nonetheless, it is heavily impacted the business on Binance. But then again, Binance is the most fortunate crypto exchange with the most resources and what we like to call a war chest to battle against the SEC. So we'll see who wins. We already know that the grayscale versus the SEC case, the SEC took a loss, XRP versus the SEC, you know, Ripple XRP, SEC also took a loss. And it seems like with the Coinbase lawsuit against Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the largest crypto exchange in the United States, the SEC may also take a loss. So we'll see how Crypto Choke Point 2.0 continues moving further. And if you had to choose a particular crypto exchange, which crypto exchange do you trust the most to do business with? Let me know in the comments right down below. And now let's break down our next story of the day. Speaking of exchanges, Bybit could no longer do business in the United Kingdom, in the UK. Let's break this baby down, shall we? Dubai headquartered crypto exchange Bybit has announced the suspension of services to the UK in response to pending rules from the country's Financial Conduct Authority, known as the FCA. In a September 22nd announcement today, Bybit said it will start suspending services to UK residents by October 1st, which is a few weeks out, virtually a week and a half, by no longer allowing new account apps. This move will be followed by the suspension of new deposits, new contracts and changes to positions for existing users on October 8th. So there you have it. You have been warned. Stop doing business with Bybit, especially if you're in the UK, as they're going to be freezing everything. Quoting them here, in light of the UK Financial Conduct Authority's introduction of new rules regarding marketing and communications by crypto businesses, Bybit has made a choice to embrace the regulation proactively and pause our services in the market. Smart, as they don't want to go against that, then they could be caused to get some serious legal issues. Bybit's date to wind down its services will fall on the FCA's deadline for crypto asset firms, marketing to users in the UK, to be in compliance with certain rules aimed at providing clear, fair and not misleading market regimes. The FCA first announced the rules in June and issued an additional warning yesterday, September 21st, reminding the firms of the October 8th deadline and the risk of criminal charges. So clearly this is no joke. According to Bybit, the suspension of services will allow the company to focus its efforts and resources being able to best meet the regulations outlined by the UK authorities in the future. The FCA suggests that certain firms could have until January 2024 to be in compliance with the marketing rules, which would need prior approval from the regulator. Bybit announced a similar winding down of services also in Canada in May, citing recent regulatory development at the time. However, the firm expanded into new markets, which includes Kagestan, where it received, in principle, approval to operate as a crypto custody service provider back in May. So there you have it, fam. How many of you have ever used the Bybit crypto exchange before? Please do let me know. And will this impact you in any way? Anyone in the UK? Holla. Let me know. Now let's break down a rumor, which Nick Carter, crypto influencer, has doubled down on this theory that Bitcoin was invented by the NSA. So let's break this down. And then we'll be breaking down the latest from the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF, send in the Bitcoin price to a new parabolic all time high of $1.5 million per coin, literally ushering in $30 trillion from the total addressable market entering into the Bitcoin market cap. And then we'll dive into our live Q &A. And again, shout out to everyone just joining us. So here we go. This is a very interesting story. Bitcoin advocate Nick Carter had come out to reiterate his support for the theory that the US National Security Agency had something to do with the creation of Bitcoin. September 15th, Iris Energy co-founder Daniel Roberts seemingly revived the decade old theory on X after posting screenshots of the 1996 paper titled How to Make a Mint, the Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash. The paper is one of the first known discussions of a Bitcoin-like system, which proposes using public key cryptography to allow users to make anonymous payments without revealing their identity. The footer notes show the research paper was prepared by NSA employees. Sources included cryptography expert Katsuaki Okamoto, who co-invented the Okamoto public key crypto system in 1998. Now on September 21st, yesterday, Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, doubled down his support for the notion, stating, I actually do believe this before adding the following. I call it the Bitcoin lab leak hypothesis. I think it was a shuttered internal R &D project, which one researcher thought was too good to lay follow on the shelf and chose to secretly release. Now Carter has actually held the theory for several years, proposing back in 2020, a Bitcoin was written by NSA cryptographers as a monetary bioweapon, if you will. The code escaped those sensitive confines. Does that make it a virus that escaped from a lab? And in 2021, he stated, the only decent thing the NSA ever did from the world was let Bitcoin leak from the lab, which he announced here on Twitter. Now, very interesting, right? Now, he went on to say that this doesn't imply that the United States government secretly controls all of the Bitcoin. Another theory that often piggybacks on the Bitcoin NSA conspiracy theory would suggest the NSA created a backdoor to the Bitcoin code, quitting him here. In my version of this made up idea, the researcher did it without permission of the NSA and chose to leave the coins behind so as to preserve his autonomy. Now, there is a ton of other circumstantial evidence which supports this theory, he added. Meanwhile, some users drew attention to one of the cryptography academics, Tasuka, Tusakuki, Akamoto. My apologies if I'm butchering these names, fam. Listed in the 1996 paper, very similar to Satoshi Nakamoto. The name could have been used as inspiration for Satoshi. That's not really a critical part of the theory, though, he said. Meanwhile, Matthew Pines, director of intelligence at cybersecurity firm Krebs Stamos, believes that it is most likely a cross-fertilization of NSA crypto nerds and cypherpunk nerds. Adding the following, I suspect Satoshi had close NSA work associations, but I don't think Bitcoin itself or the white paper were officially sanctioned. We also have former Goldman Sachs executive Raul Powell, the macro guru who previously shared his own theory in an interview with Impact Theory earlier this year. Here's what Raul Powell shared. I think the US government and the UK government invented it, which is the NSA and the GCHQ in the UK, who are the two world centers of cryptography. And then in August, Cointelegraph did a deep dive into the conspiracy theory and interviewed former NSA crypt analyst Jeff Mann, who said that while it was feasible that the NSA could have created Bitcoin as a means to gather intelligence about its enemies, it is highly doubtful. However, he also concluded that even if they did, it is likely we'll never find out the real story behind the world's most popular digital asset until it doesn't matter anymore. Very interesting to say the least. Here's what we know as fact. Regardless if it was inspired or created out of the NSA, nobody controls Bitcoin, including the US government, including any government of the world and including the NSA. So you got to be thankful for that regardless where it was birthed from. But what are your thoughts? What are your theories? Please let me know in the comments right down below. And as I mentioned earlier, we'll be reading everyone's comments out loud at the end of the show. Now let's discuss the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF, which is on everyone's mind right now. If we get the approval from the SEC and Mr. Gensler, this can help usher in literally 30 trillion dollars into the Bitcoin market cap. Now, with the Bitcoin market cap currently sitting at roughly 500 billion dollars, we're talking about literally 60 X from here. Now, if the price action did a 60 X, I mean, we're in the ballpark of one and a half million dollars per coin. So let's break this baby down, shall we? I'm going to actually be sharing multiple predictions with you here. The number of regulatory requests to offer a spot Bitcoin ETF coming from a range of institutional financial firms has led to bullish speculation to remain remarkable excitement for the crypto market, to say the least, as the US SEC considers such filings from BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, controlling 10 trillion in assets under management. We have Fidelity, they control four and a half trillion. We have ARK Invest, Cathie Wood's company, plus so much more. So it seems like at least one upcoming approval will come in a matter of time. The SEC is set to hit its next set for deadlines for the approval decisions mid October, knowing October is only a week and a half out. So investors are left to speculate about which firm might receive the approval first. So let me know your thoughts. How many of you think that the Bitcoin ETF approval could get the green light as soon as October, which is the next deadline? Let me know. I think more than likely Gensler is going to kick the can down the road until next year, as they seem to be doing that since the inception of Bitcoin ETFs have been accepted or, you know, submitted to the SEC. They've been declining them literally for over a decade now. So more than likely, I think it's to get the approval next year, right before the halving, creating the perfect storm. But let me know your thoughts, fam. Now, Mark Yusko, chief investment officer of the managing director hedge fund, Morgan Creek Capital, is picking BlackRock for the first to get the green light, quitting him here, I believe. And I've said multiple times that BlackRock will be the first one. Yusko said during a recent appearance on the Paul Baron network, I might even go stronger and say they might be the only one. It's certainly possible. Do you think BlackRock will get that monopoly? Let me know, fam. What's probably more likely is BlackRock first, then a gap and then some number of others. But the thing is, whoever's first is going to get the vast majority of assets. I think he makes a great point. Now, Yusko's prediction that BlackRock will receive the first mover advantage in offering a spot Bitcoin ETF leads him to believe the product will capture the lion's share of the 30 trillion dollars currently managed by the firms that would seek Bitcoin exposure to a regulated ETF product. Now, even given that so much Bitcoin is locked into wallets that may never be accessed again or sitting in the hands of hyper convicted hodlers who won't sell, Yusko went on to make a bold prediction for how much institutional capital will impact the Bitcoin price. He put a dollar figure for a free float Bitcoin. The amount of Bitcoin that is readily available to the market at just 100 billion dollars, quoting Yusko here, I believe the ETF will be approved sometime around year end that will pave the way for a very large influx of capital. Let's say one tenth of one percent of the predicted 30 trillion comes in. That's 30 billion dollars and 30 billion on 100 billion. What will the price be? Yusko added that Bitcoin's upcoming reward halving event when the Bitcoin rewards that miners receive is programmatically cut in half will create conditions of a parabolic price increase, leading to be decidedly bullish price target. There is a built in mechanism, he says, to drive the price higher. Every halving has added a zero, he explained, adding that he thinks the effect of this next halving will be relatively muted but can still drive the Bitcoin price exponentially. That gives us about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per Bitcoin or something like that. Well, let's dive more specifically into 30 trillion being unlocked into the market. Now, again, if we were to 60x the current Bitcoin price and market cap, we're talking about a one and a half million dollar Bitcoin price action. So Eric Balchunes, he is the Bloomberg ETF head analyst, FYI. He believes that the 30 trillion worth of capital could be made available to the Bitcoin market if a spot Bitcoin ETF is approved. The same as Mark Yusko, which I just covered, the analyst stated that a spot Bitcoin ETF can serve as a bridge between the Bitcoin market and an impressive amount of capital. That's right. When asked why the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. would be a big deal, Balchunes stated that financial advisors and the old generation of investors prefer their investments delivered in an ETF, a format that they are more familiar and comfortable with, quoting Balchunes here, ETF is the format in which the boomers and the financial advisors prefer their investments delivered. And this matters because financial advisors manage about 30 trillion dollars worth of assets. Now, a major talking point in some crypto investment circles, the spot Bitcoin ETF is yet to be approved by the SEC. In fact, over the past decade, the regulator rejected as many as 30 spot Bitcoin ETFs from firms such as Gemini, Fidelity, Wisdom Tree, etc. However, Balchunes notes the odds of approval in the next year have increased to about 50 percent. And he actually went on since then and said there is a 95 percent chance of that spot Bitcoin ETF approval in 2024. He attributed this to the recent filing by BlackRock, sharing that the high level asset manager, which holds roughly 10 trillion in assets under management, is very smart and they don't just throw filings out willy nilly. They clearly see something out there that they think can get through to the regulators and commenting on when we are likely to hear from the SEC. Obviously, that next deadline is October. Let me know, fam, if you feel it's likely to get pushed back once again. Now let's discuss the BlackRock and Coinbase deal, not even the ETF, but just the BlackRock Coinbase deal. Send in the Bitcoin price parabolic to $773,000 per coin, according to crypto analysts, invest answers as well as Dan Shapiro. So let's break this down how they arrive at this number. If BlackRock puts a half a percent of their assets under management into Bitcoin using my multiplier, which is 21X, that will impact the market cap by one trillion, which will add about $75,000 to the Bitcoin price. Now, taking it to $98,000 and an ROI from today's price is 326 percent. This is very, very achievable. Now, if they allocate just one percent, which of course will take time to get to that level, that would add about $2.1 trillion to the market cap. So $150,000 to the price would take the future price of Bitcoin to $173,000, which is a 652 percent gain from here. And if they add 5 percent, which is what Dan Tapiero says, I think it is way too aggressive. But maybe over time, maybe in the next three to five years, that could be possible. That would take the price of Bitcoin to $773,000 per coin in the next three to five years pretty easily. I mean, the numbers don't lie. What are your thoughts, fam? Now, the chart that got BlackRock excited about the partnership with Coinbase is right here, quoting him, no bigger a macro opportunity for BlackRock than acting to facilitate the Bitcoin adoption. A 5 percent shift in BlackRock assets is $500 billion. That's greater than the Bitcoin value today, a catalyst for a path to $250,000 plus Bitcoin post Bitcoin halving is becoming clear. And these predictions were made at the end of last year before BlackRock submitted this recent application to the SEC for a spot Bitcoin ETF, only making it that much more bullish. What are your thoughts, fam? Let me know where you feel the Bitcoin price is likely to go and which spot ETF application do you feel is most likely to get approved first. Let me know your thoughts in the comments right down below. And don't forget to check out CryptoNewsAlerts.net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from ARK & 21Shares File Ethereum Spot ETF
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup, here's your latest for Wednesday September 6th, 2023. ARK Invest and 21 shares file for an Ethereum spot ETF, Vitalik Buterin co -authors a privacy paper, the Ethereum Foundation announces ERC4337 grant recipients, and Synthetix explores a multichain approach. All this and more starts right now. Vitalik Buterin, Jacob Bilom, Mathias Nader, Fabian Skar, and Amin Soleimani co -authored a research paper titled Blockchain Privacy and Regulatory Compliance Towards a Practical Equilibrium. The paper introduces a method for users to securely disassociate from illicit funds within a privacy pool, aiming to serve as a neutral resource for blockchain regulatory compliance globally. Privacy Pools, coined as the successor to Tornado Cash, is an open -source smart contract -based privacy tool. It employs zero -knowledge proofs to ensure that deposit and withdrawals remain unlinked. The tool offers customizable privacy sets enabling users to disassociate themselves from illicit addresses during withdrawals. The mechanism enhances privacy protection against malicious actors and allows users to demonstrate that their funds originate from legitimate deposits without having to disclose their entire transaction history. ARK Invest and 21 shares jointly filed an application with the U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a spot Ethereum exchange -traded fund. Coined as the ARK 21 shares Ethereum ETF, the fund would invest directly in Ethereum and custody funds with Coinbase custody. The ETFs would also trade on the CBOE BZX exchange. If approved, it would mark the first crypto spot ETF in the United States. The application comes after a U .S. District Court judge sided with Grayscale in a petition to review an application to convert GPT -C into a spot ETF. ARK Invest is an investment management firm by Cathie Wood and 21 shares is a provider of crypto exchange -traded products. In a new blog post, Synthetix founder Kane Warwick discussed the feasibility and necessity of deploying its derivatives protocol across multiple blockchains, starting with an experimental deployment on base. Synthetix is currently live on Ethereum and OP mainnet. Warwick also discussed the potential launch of a Synthetix app chain built on the OP stack, which would simplify governance. Liquidity fragmentation remains a top barrier for multi -chain deployments. Warwick suggested an initial deployment on base to experiment with demand for ETH collateral rather than the protocol's native as next token. Warwick emphasized adaptability and the need to gather data before any significant changes are made to the protocol. And lastly, the Ethereum Foundation announced the winners of its account abstraction grants program. A total of $300 ,000 was allocated to 18 grant recipients, which include Ambry Wallet, ZeroDev, Etherspot, Mina Wallet, and 6th Degree Lab. The program awarded builders who improve and strengthen account abstraction infrastructure on Ethereum. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io.
Coronavirus
A highlight from ARK & 21Shares File Ethereum Spot ETF
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup, here's your latest for Wednesday September 6th, 2023. ARK Invest and 21 shares file for an Ethereum spot ETF, Vitalik Buterin co -authors a privacy paper, the Ethereum Foundation announces ERC4337 grant recipients, and Synthetix explores a multichain approach. All this and more starts right now. Vitalik Buterin, Jacob Bilom, Mathias Nader, Fabian Skar, and Amin Soleimani co -authored a research paper titled Blockchain Privacy and Regulatory Compliance Towards a Practical Equilibrium. The paper introduces a method for users to securely disassociate from illicit funds within a privacy pool, aiming to serve as a neutral resource for blockchain regulatory compliance globally. Privacy Pools, coined as the successor to Tornado Cash, is an open -source smart contract -based privacy tool. It employs zero -knowledge proofs to ensure that deposit and withdrawals remain unlinked. The tool offers customizable privacy sets enabling users to disassociate themselves from illicit addresses during withdrawals. The mechanism enhances privacy protection against malicious actors and allows users to demonstrate that their funds originate from legitimate deposits without having to disclose their entire transaction history. ARK Invest and 21 shares jointly filed an application with the U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a spot Ethereum exchange -traded fund. Coined as the ARK 21 shares Ethereum ETF, the fund would invest directly in Ethereum and custody funds with Coinbase custody. The ETFs would also trade on the CBOE BZX exchange. If approved, it would mark the first crypto spot ETF in the United States. The application comes after a U .S. District Court judge sided with Grayscale in a petition to review an application to convert GPT -C into a spot ETF. ARK Invest is an investment management firm by Cathie Wood and 21 shares is a provider of crypto exchange -traded products. In a new blog post, Synthetix founder Kane Warwick discussed the feasibility and necessity of deploying its derivatives protocol across multiple blockchains, starting with an experimental deployment on base. Synthetix is currently live on Ethereum and OP mainnet. Warwick also discussed the potential launch of a Synthetix app chain built on the OP stack, which would simplify governance. Liquidity fragmentation remains a top barrier for multi -chain deployments. Warwick suggested an initial deployment on base to experiment with demand for ETH collateral rather than the protocol's native as next token. Warwick emphasized adaptability and the need to gather data before any significant changes are made to the protocol. And lastly, the Ethereum Foundation announced the winners of its account abstraction grants program. A total of $300 ,000 was allocated to 18 grant recipients, which include Ambry Wallet, ZeroDev, Etherspot, Mina Wallet, and 6th Degree Lab. The program awarded builders who improve and strengthen account abstraction infrastructure on Ethereum. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 655:Judge Sez ETH Not a Security, Uniswap Wins, Binances Strategies
"Rockstar Energy Punched. Bringing a bold and unapologetic flavor packed with energy through a blend of B vitamins, corona extract, and 240 milligrams of caffeine to fuel what's next. Rockstar Energy Drink. Good evening and welcome to The Crypto Overnight -er. I'm Nicodemus and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 PM Pacific on Thursday, August 31st, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight -er, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight we're diving into a pivotal court ruling that could shape the future of DeFi. GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy shares his crypto vision and grayscale scores a legal victory. Binance pivots with both a stablecoin swap and ambitious plans in Japan. EOS breaks through regulatory barriers, also in Japan. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong lays out a roadmap for crypto's future. And finally, Robinhood is making moves that could reshape its position in the crypto landscape. A US district court judge in New York dismissed a class action lawsuit against Uniswap Labs. Now, just as a point of interest, the judge has won Katherine Polk Fela, Judge Fela is also overseeing the SEC's case against Coinbase. So this may portend of things to come. Six crypto investors filed the lawsuit. They claimed that they were scammed on Uniswap between December 2020 and March 2022. The plaintiffs argued that Uniswap Labs controlled its liquidity pools. They said this included pools created by scammers. The lawsuit sought to rescind smart contracts and demanded compensation. And here it comes, folks, possibly the most important part. Judge Fela termed Bitcoin and Ethereum as crypto commodities. She was not convinced Uniswap's token sales fell under federal securities laws. This is a pivotal moment, not just for Uniswap, but for the crypto space at large. The judge's decision to dismiss the case against Uniswap is a win for decentralized finance. It sets a precedent that could shield DeFi protocols from similar lawsuits in the future. The judge's comments show a deep understanding of DeFi technology. She stated that concerns about crypto regulation are better addressed to Congress than to the court. This is a clear signal to lawmakers who have been slow to provide regulatory clarity over digital assets. The judge's ruling also comes at a time when the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are at odds over crypto regulation. The SEC's chair, Gary Gensler, claimed that everything apart from Bitcoin is a security. On the other hand, the CFTC claimed that Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies are commodities. This case could serve as a reference point in future regulatory debates. While Judge Phela's ruling on Uniswap is a beacon of hope, the regulatory landscape isn't all roses. GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has some choice words for the SEC. Stick around, you won't want to miss this. And don't forget to subscribe for the latest updates.
Coronavirus
A highlight from Aevo Zero-Fee Bridging From Optimism
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday, August 30th, 2023. Avio integrates zero -fee bridging for Optimism and Arbitrum, a Judge dismisses a Uniswap class action lawsuit, the FragDao releases ENS shortcuts, and Argent releases mobile support for Starknet. All this and more starts right now. Avio, a derivatives -focused rollup, now supports USDC bridging from Arbitrum and opmainnet. Users can now bridge USDC from the Layer 2 networks with zero bridging fees and zero slippage, according to the project. The bridging feature is powered by Interoperability Protocol Socket, which allows appchains to tap into Layer 2 liquidity flows. Socket now allows appchain rollups to access Layer 2 liquidity with a single connection. Avio was built using Conduit, a rollup -as -a -service infrastructure provider, and runs on a customized version of the OPStack codebase. Avio offers an options trading exchange that operates as an off -chain order book with on -chain settlements. A US District Court Judge dismissed a class action lawsuit filed against Uniswap Labs, its CEO Hayden Adams, and Uniswap Investors. The lawsuit was filed in April of 2022, alleging that Uniswap was responsible for users losing money to scam tokens. It claimed Uniswap Labs had control over liquidity pools with illegitimate tokens. The lawsuit also tacked on securities violations. The court dismissed the claims, stating that the decentralized nature of Uniswap prevented the defendants from being held responsible for the actions of third parties. The judge's ruling cited a prior class action lawsuit filed against Coinbase in 2022, which was also dismissed. DefragDAO, a lending protocol native to Arbitrum, released ENS shortcuts, a tool that uses ENS domains to automate on -chain actions such as bridging and swapping. The release features six initial ENS shortcuts, including providing liquidity on Beefy Finance, swapping ETH to USDC via Uniswap, and bridging to Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, or Polygon. To execute an action, such as bridging to base, users can simply transfer ETH to the toBase .eth .ens address. The shortcut will then bridge the assets using Hop protocol and will transfer them to the user's Layer 2 address. The shortcuts aim to reduce phishing attacks by allowing users to execute on -chain tasks directly within their wallet. And lastly, Argents released early access support for StarkNet on its mobile smart contract wallet. Users can now access the Layer 2 network directly on their mobile device. The release includes a fiat on -ramp via RAP network, bridging via LayerSwap, and support for StarkNet NFTs. Last month, Argent launched a StarkNet NFT marketplace called Unframed. The mobile app does not yet support wallet imports for Argent X wallets. Argent X is a browser extension wallet and was the first wallet released for the StarkNet ecosystem. Argent plans to add support for swaps, staking, and integrated DeFi dApps. It also plans to enable on -chain wallet recovery. Argent will host a product overview stream for the wallet on September 6th. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from Aevo Zero-Fee Bridging From Optimism
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday, August 30th, 2023. Avio integrates zero -fee bridging for Optimism and Arbitrum, a Judge dismisses a Uniswap class action lawsuit, the FragDao releases ENS shortcuts, and Argent releases mobile support for Starknet. All this and more starts right now. Avio, a derivatives -focused rollup, now supports USDC bridging from Arbitrum and opmainnet. Users can now bridge USDC from the Layer 2 networks with zero bridging fees and zero slippage, according to the project. The bridging feature is powered by Interoperability Protocol Socket, which allows appchains to tap into Layer 2 liquidity flows. Socket now allows appchain rollups to access Layer 2 liquidity with a single connection. Avio was built using Conduit, a rollup -as -a -service infrastructure provider, and runs on a customized version of the OPStack codebase. Avio offers an options trading exchange that operates as an off -chain order book with on -chain settlements. A US District Court Judge dismissed a class action lawsuit filed against Uniswap Labs, its CEO Hayden Adams, and Uniswap Investors. The lawsuit was filed in April of 2022, alleging that Uniswap was responsible for users losing money to scam tokens. It claimed Uniswap Labs had control over liquidity pools with illegitimate tokens. The lawsuit also tacked on securities violations. The court dismissed the claims, stating that the decentralized nature of Uniswap prevented the defendants from being held responsible for the actions of third parties. The judge's ruling cited a prior class action lawsuit filed against Coinbase in 2022, which was also dismissed. DefragDAO, a lending protocol native to Arbitrum, released ENS shortcuts, a tool that uses ENS domains to automate on -chain actions such as bridging and swapping. The release features six initial ENS shortcuts, including providing liquidity on Beefy Finance, swapping ETH to USDC via Uniswap, and bridging to Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, or Polygon. To execute an action, such as bridging to base, users can simply transfer ETH to the toBase .eth .ens address. The shortcut will then bridge the assets using Hop protocol and will transfer them to the user's Layer 2 address. The shortcuts aim to reduce phishing attacks by allowing users to execute on -chain tasks directly within their wallet. And lastly, Argents released early access support for StarkNet on its mobile smart contract wallet. Users can now access the Layer 2 network directly on their mobile device. The release includes a fiat on -ramp via RAP network, bridging via LayerSwap, and support for StarkNet NFTs. Last month, Argent launched a StarkNet NFT marketplace called Unframed. The mobile app does not yet support wallet imports for Argent X wallets. Argent X is a browser extension wallet and was the first wallet released for the StarkNet ecosystem. Argent plans to add support for swaps, staking, and integrated DeFi dApps. It also plans to enable on -chain wallet recovery. Argent will host a product overview stream for the wallet on September 6th. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
Mark Levin
NY Times: Judge Sets Trial Date for Trump’s Federal Election Case
"January 2nd? But it potentially brought the proceeding into conflict with three other trials that Mr. Trump is facing, underscoring the extraordinary complexity of his legal situation, the intersection of prosecutions of this campaign to return to the White House. The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, has proposed taking Mr. Trump to trial in charges of tampering with the election in the state on March 4th as well. Another case in Manhattan in which Mr. Trump's been accused of more than 30 felonies connected to nondisclosure agreements in the run -up to the 2016 election is scheduled to go to trial on March 25th. So that would be two trials the same day and then another trial on the 25th while the other two trials are going on. And trial if the in Washington lasts more than 11 weeks, it could bump up against Mr. Trump's other federal trial on March 25th. And obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them. Now notice the bias in the article to begin regurgitating the by the prosecutor. But let's go on. That trial is scheduled to begin in in Florida late May. The March 4 date set by Judge Truncan for the federal election case at a hearing in federal district court in Washington is the day before Super Tuesday. When 15 states scheduled are to hold Republican primaries or caucuses. Judge Truncan said that while she understood Mr. Trump had both other trial dates scheduled next year and at the same time was running for the country's highest office, she was not going to let the intersection of his legal troubles and his political campaign get in the way of setting a date. She said Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1377: This Will Send Bitcoin to $10,000,000 - Binance CEO CZ
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis, as well as Gemini files a brief in the lawsuit against the SEC requesting to keep it simple. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin mining stocks up 200%, year to date, and one has soared literally almost 400%. We'll also be discussing when the Bitcoin price is likely to bottom after this crypto market downturn, according to crypto analytics firm Glassnode. We'll also be discussing the analyst Dave the Wave who called the 2021 crypto meltdown forecast a new Bitcoin all -time high. I'll be sharing his timeline. We'll also be discussing the Binance CEO CZ predicts the Bitcoin price will reach $10 million. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost a video show. So you want the full premium experience with video visit my rumble channel at crypto news alerts dotnet. Again, that's crypto news alerts dotnet. Welcome again to everyone just joining us. And today is August 20th, 2023. So happy Sunday. I'm your host JV, and this is pod episode number 1377. So let's fricking go. Let's start with our market watch as we do each and every day. You should be able to see this popping up on your screen right now. For those watching the broadcast, you can see Bitcoin still in the red, unfortunately, but the good news we're maintaining that $26 ,000 support, which I love to see. We have ether also in the red trading at $1 ,682 and checking out coinmarketcap .com. The current crypto market cap sits barely above that $1 trillion milestone. We got about 21 billion in volume in the past 24 hours with Bitcoin dominance at 48 % even and the ether dominance at 19 % even and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers in the past 24 hours. As you can see here, we got Stellar Lumens leading the pack up 7 % trading at $0 .13, followed by XDC up 6 % trading just under $0 .06, followed by ThorChain up almost 6 % trading at $1 .85 and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers for the past week. You can see a mixture between red and green with some of the top gainers, including Roon XLM and XDC and checking out the crypto greed and fear index as of a few days ago with that epic crash where we saw over a billion dollars in the crypto market liquidated. We're currently in fear, currently rated a 37. Last week was a 54 and last month a 50, which is neutral. So there you have it. How many of you have been taking advantage of this recent dip? Put BTFD in that live chat. Now let's break down today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what is popping with that king crypto. Bitcoin hovered around 26 ,000 into the 20th weekly close as doomsday Bitcoin price targets kept coming. And here you're looking at the Bitcoin one hour candle chart. Now data from Cointelegraph and TradingView showed an eerie calm covering Bitcoin over the weekend with the market down 11 % in the past week. Yikes. And quoting Keith Allen and Material Indicators, I think 25 ,000 will eventually break down and clear a path to retest support at the 2017 bull market top, which was just under 20 ,000. But I don't know if we can get the retest for 25 ,000 support to potentially print a double bottom and provide a good foundation for another exit rally. If that setup presents itself, we're talking 28 to 29 ,000 range is realistic. And Allen continued that such a rebound may even hit the 100 week simple moving average currently sitting just above 31 ,300 dollars. Quitting him here, if and when we get the retest at 25 ,000, my eyes are looking at the next series of the lower lows. And he continued first would be 24 ,749 on Coinbase and the next is 19 ,567, which is not so coincidentally located just below the RS flip zone at the 2017 bull market top. Losing that level paves the way for a paradise and a potential generational buying opportunity. Now, if you'd actually look forward to the generational buy opportunity with a Bitcoin price that low, let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. And he also shares this chart. Others shared the consensus that 20 ,000 will be back on the radar only should 25 ,000 fail to act as support. Quoting Sku Analytics here, a break below 25 .3 will probably target 24 to 23 for a stronger buyback reaction else continuation towards 20 ,000. But a deep sweep below 20 ,000 is the extreme end in which would look like a swing long there. How many of you think that Bitcoin can have that probability of dropping sub 20 ,000? Let me know your thoughts. Keep it in mind that was like the price action six years ago is insane right at the height of the market in 2017. Now, Sku nonetheless suggests that the intraday Bitcoin price action might see a bounce around the weekly close with 28 ,500 as a potential target should the buy side pressure step up, which is outlined in this chart. Now, some less extreme support levels below 20 ,000 also came in from analytics platform Whale Map, quoting them here. In case we go even lower, it commented on a print of his data uploaded to X, adding that 19 ,200 and 16 ,600 were the other points of interest. Now previous, keep in mind the whale support at 28 ,250 and 26 ,950 nonetheless failed to hold the market on the way down. And check this out as Rizzo shared on X. This is a quote from Dan Morehead. Bitcoin is like buying gold in 1000 BC before Christ. And he actually shared this quote all the way back in August of 2013. And as Rizzo points out, true at $100 and true today Bitcoin. That's right, because one Bitcoin will always be equivalent to one Bitcoin. So keep stacking them stats fam. And now let's discuss the latest developments between Gemini and the SEC. As you know, Gemini won the top exchanges in the United States headed over by the Winklevoss twins. In fact, they were the very first to actually submit an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States over a decade ago, but no Claire Gere and the rest of the regulators that preceded him, the Jay Clayton's of the world have been denying it ever since. But let's see what's popping recently with this back and forth crypto exchange. Gemini filed a reply brief as a part of its efforts to dismiss the lawsuit it faces against the US SEC. The lawsuit alleges Gemini earned which is a service enabling customers to lend crypto assets like Bitcoin to Genesis breach security regulations by offering unregistered securities. How many of you were impacted by that Genesis earned program? Let me know. And according to August 18, court documents filed by the US District Court from the Southern District in New York, Gemini argued the SEC has failed to make a clear claim. Quoting them here, section five of the Securities Act is not hard to understand. The filings stated while arguing that the SEC has not clearly pointed out the requirements for claiming a violation of the act. The fact that the SEC cannot decide that what is a security is an issue which only underscores the weakness of its position. I think they make a great point right there. It further argued that the court shouldn't tackle the convoluted analysis presented by the SEC. And the agency should pose straightforward questions to determine whether it qualifies as a security. That's right, because ultimately, in Gary Gensler and the SEC's eyes, every single cryptocurrency is a unregistered security minus Bitcoin. That's just the way it is. Now it prompted questions including when was the alleged security sold? Who was the buyer? Who was the seller? And what was the price offered or changed? And it's all outlined right here from court filing. I'll include this in the show notes below the video in the description. Gemini also contended that the SEC must highlight the unregistered security first, in which they haven't done, then identify the sale or offer to sell that security. It claimed the SEC had not fulfilled this. However, the SEC has not met that burden and its opposition avoids the question before the court. The filing stated. Now, another person pointed out that the SEC is floundering. They can't even decide what the security is. And also shared on one hand, they claim that the loan agreement was a security, but on the other hand, they claim the entire Gemini earned program was itself a security, which really makes no sense, right? An argument absurd on its face. Here's my thoughts on why they're going after all of the Gemini earned programs or anything where you can earn yield, because it outperforms any standard bank and they don't want competition because the central bankers rule this planet, unfortunately. So for example, if you can earn hypothetically, say a 5 % reward by staking a cryptocurrency, what has the bank given you in a high savings yielding account? What do you get? 0 .01 % nowadays, virtually nothing. And you're really losing money due to inflation as Michael Saylor once described it as a melting ice cube. So not shocking, but I truly do hope that the Winklevoss twins and Gemini wins this lawsuit against the SEC, that the SEC can't continue their crypto crackdown. But how do you think this is likely to play out? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments. Write us down below. Now let's dive into Bitcoin mining stocks, which have been popping this year. Bitcoin may be down for the week, but it's still up 50 % year to date. So take that Peter Schiff. Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining stocks jumped over 200 % year to date with one minor stock, which is cipher mining up a whopping almost 400 % thus far this year. The Bitcoin price fell 10 % against the US dollar on Thursday amid speculations that SpaceX might have sold its remaining holdings, something like 375 million a Bitcoin, but it may just be nothing more than FUD. We have to also keep that in mind. Now, crypto stocks are up quite a bit more this far into 2023 than the broad stock market. The S &P 500 as well as the top 500 US companies have increased by a very healthy 14 % thus far this year. And the tech -focused NASDAQ is up a whopping 28 % for the year.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 645:SEC Targets Ripple, Binance-Checkout Split, Cuban vs OpenSea
"To those who visit Mickey D's for their favorite breakfast item and then go somewhere else for coffee, give this Mickey D's brew a second chance. The glow up was real. Try any size iced coffee brewed with 100 % Arabica beans for just 99 cents until 11 a .m. and pair it with a savory Sausage McMuffin with Egg for $2 .79. Prices and participation may vary, cannot be combined with any other offer. Rockstar Energy Punched, bringing a bold and unapologetic flavor packed with energy through a blend of B vitamins, guarana extract, and 240 milligrams of caffeine to fuel what's next. Rockstar Energy Drink. Good evening and welcome to the Crypto Overnighter. I'm Nick Ademus and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Saturday, August 19th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnighter where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so we're going to talk about that. First, however, a reminder that there will be no new episodes on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of next week. We're going out of town for our anniversary, so I won't be putting out content from the 21st to the 23rd of August. So after tomorrow, I'll be gone and I won't be back until Thursday. As for tonight, we'll delve into the SEC's relentless pursuit against Ripple and what this means for the broader crypto industry. We'll uncover the rift between Binance and Checkout .com, exploring the challenges of navigating the regulatory terrain in the crypto space. Exactly Protocol faces a substantial breach, shining a light on the vulnerabilities in the DeFi sector. Ethereum gears up to unveil its innovative HolSky testnet, another leap towards continuous improvement. Mark Cuban takes on OpenSea in a showdown over NFT royalties, and we'll wrap things up with Taiwan's refreshing approach to fostering growth in the crypto sector. The U .S. Securities Exchange Commission has taken another step in its ongoing legal battle against Ripple Labs. On Thursday, Judge Annalisa Torres of the U .S. District Court for the Southern District of New York allowed the SEC to present its argument for an appeal for her earlier ruling. On Friday, the SEC requested permission to appeal the judge's ruling that XRP sales through exchanges did not breach securities law. The SEC's appeal specifically targets the judge's decision that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP were not in violation of securities law. This is because retail investors buying XRP on an exchange would not have the same expectations as an institutional investor purchasing directly from Ripple. The SEC's appeal emphasizes the legal determinations about the existence of investment contracts based on undisputed facts. The outcome of this appeal could influence other SEC cases. Notably, it suits against Coinbase and DragonChain. The SEC's focus is on the sales of XRP, not the asset itself. They clarified that they do not argue that the underlying assets of those investment contracts were securities. Ripple has until September 1, 2023, to respond to SEC's motion. If the SEC does get approval for the interlocutory appeal from Judge Torres, they will then need to petition the Second District Court of Appeals to review the case. The SEC's move to appeal has broader implications for the crypto industry. The way the court handles the Ripple case could significantly affect other pending litigations, especially those between the SEC and major crypto trading platforms like Binance and Coinbase. The SEC believes that an immediate appeal is necessary due to the controlling questions of law involved and the substantial grounds for differing opinions on these matters. Interestingly, the SEC has officially admitted that digital assets, including XRP, are not inherently securities. This admission is significant and has sparked reactions from the crypto community. Attorney John Deaton highlighted that the SEC's concession on this issue may have been influenced by over 75 ,000 XRP holders who joined the lawsuit. The ongoing legal tussle between Ripple and the SEC began in 2020 when the SEC accused Ripple of raising $1 .3 billion through XRP sales. Judge Torres had previously ruled that some of Ripple's XRP sales did not violate securities laws due to a blind bid process. However, she also determined that other direct sales of the token to institutional investors were securities, giving the SEC a partial victory. The SEC now wants to appeal the decision about the programmatic sales and other distributions of XRP in exchange for goods and services. This case is a testament to the evolving nature of regulations in the crypto space and the challenges faced by both regulators and crypto companies. As the legal proceedings continue, the crypto community will be keenly watching the developments, given the potential implications for the broader industry. While Ripple faces the SEC, Binance confronts its own set of challenges. By the way, if you're enjoying our in -depth analysis, ensure that you subscribe and get notifications. Let's delve into what's brewing between Binance and Checkout .com.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Tornado Cash Sanctions Upheld In Court
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, N .L .W. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, August 19th, and that means it's time for the weekly recap. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it. Give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Now, today we are catching up on a ton of legal updates that have happened this week. This continues to be the big theme of this bear market is legal cleanup, legal proceedings, legal blah, blah, blah, which unfortunately is just sort of part of the phase that we have to get through before we get to the exciting stuff like, you know, usage and excitement and whatever, anything that isn't just legal stuff. But here we are. However, I want to start with something that is a little bit more on the market structure side, given the dump that we had on Thursday. So in the middle of the week, the block started reporting that yet another crypto market maker was pulling back. Apparently, longtime crypto market maker GSR has been scaling down operations during the bear market. Now, this is a firm that has been active in crypto order books since 2013. They had already conducted two rounds of layoffs and appeared to have also lost multiple executives and department heads. The firm's chief financial officer, Jonathan Hu, has been the highest profile departure. He joined the firm in 2021 and helped build out the company's finance department. Anonymous sources speaking with the block criticized the firm for expanding too rapidly during the height of the bull market. GSR brought on scores of traditional financial professionals to help expand the firm. In 2020, the firm had just 25 employees, but the number went up to more than 300 at its peak. One source said, quote, The executive team is mostly friends, and I think it threw off a lot of the momentum GSR built in the previous cycle. They hired a lot of corporate Wall Street executives that came in at the top with the bull market, which ended up costing the firm dearly. Another source said, quote, Some of the leadership is out of touch with true crypto. Now, a spokesperson for GSR said, Our business operations and strategy have evolved naturally to respond to changing market conditions, and there has been no restructuring. GSR president Rich Rosenblum took this even farther. On Wednesday, he wrote, Regarding the block's reporting yesterday, we worked with the reporter in good faith, but it's clear the story was always intended to be a negative one regardless of the facts. Here is some additional color on GSR. GSR's business is strong. We have navigated three volatile bear markets successfully without raising outside capital. The firm has a solid balance sheet. We continue to be profitable and increase our market share regardless of market conditions. The article tries to suggest that departures over 18 months are more than bear market norms. We've had many personnel changes over the last decade, but juxtaposing it alongside strategy changes in a bear market to write a sensational piece is irresponsible. We aren't going anywhere, and we continue to be very bullish. We are one of the longest operating and one of the best funded companies in the space. We stand stronger and better positioned now than at any other point in our history. Obviously, this has gotten very quickly into a he -said -she -said, but mostly why it's worth paying attention to, at least with a little bit of side -eye, is what Noelle Acheson wrote, More market -maker scalebacks is not great for crypto market liquidity, which is already low. With that, though, let's move into the legal stuff. First, a group of investors and developers have lost a lawsuit which challenged the legality of the tornado cash sanctions. The litigation, which was funded by Coinbase, claimed that the US Treasury had exceeded its authority in dealing with tornado cash using sanctions law. In coming to their decision in a district court in Texas, the judge found that tornado cash itself was sufficiently coherent in operation to be considered an entity capable of being sanctioned. The Treasury Department can only sanction entities such as individuals, companies, or unincorporated associations. The judge found that the Treasury had identified an entity when it designated tornado cash as including the developers and the DAO which governed the operation of the mixer. The judge wrote that, The DAO is an entity unto itself that, through its voting members, has demonstrated an agreement to a common purpose. As the government notes, the structure is not unlike that of stockholders of a corporation who may not intend to vote in a shareholder meeting without this affecting the structure of the entity. They ultimately found that adding tornado cash to the sanctions list was not plainly inconsistent with its regulations. The judge also rejected the argument that there was no property which could be the subject of sanctions. Litigants claimed that the tornado cash entity, whatever that constituted, does not have property rights in the smart contracts identified by the Treasury. Sanctions can only prohibit US citizens from transacting with sanctioned entities in relation to property, so their use to prohibit interacting with a smart contract was a novel application of the law. The litigants also made an argument that the sanctions violated First Amendment rights to free speech. The tornado cash sanctions were somewhat unique in that they prohibited US citizens from transacting in a privacy -protected manner. The Treasury is not allowed to sanction US individuals, so there was an argument that prohibiting them from using tornado cash was unconstitutional. Now, the tornado cash sanctions drew widespread criticism from the industry when they were put in place last August. The measure was taken ostensibly to deal with North Korean hacking group Lazarus. However, critics said the sanctions were too much of an impingement on privacy and crypto. Coin Center have filed their own legal challenge to the sanctions which is yet to be heard. Next up, the SEC has been allowed to move forward with an appeal in the Ripple case. The regulator is attempting to appeal the parts of the case which were decided against it. Namely, that the programmatic sales of XRP tokens and distributions to employees and contractors were not to be considered the sale of securities. The SEC requested leave to file a motion to appeal last week, to which Ripple objected, claiming that The judge has now granted this leave to file the motion. Once filed, the court can either accept or reject the SEC's reasoning to appeal the decision. If successful, the appellate court would also need to agree to hear the case and then determine whether the SEC is successful in their appeal. Bill Hughes tried to sum up some of this extreme legal complexity saying, The court has not granted leave to appeal. It granted leave to file a motion for leave to appeal. The court just decided, yeah, we can deal with this issue. Again, guys, this is the kind of minutiae that we're dealing with right now. Ultimately, it's important, but I don't think any of us will be sad for the days when we get to focus on other things. Speaking of other things, the Federal Reserve has brought an enforcement action against Farmington State Bank, which used to be known as Moonstone Bank. Moonstone was the tiny bank in rural Washington which accepted an $11 .5 million investment from Alameda Research in March of 2022. The thing that made that investment notable and weird was that it was more than double the bank's entire net worth at the time. Moonstone also had ties to Deltech Bank Executives, which is the Bahamas bank that notoriously dealt with stablecoin issuer Tether as a customer. Moonstone was one of the smallest federally chartered banks in the country. Indeed, last year photos circulated of its headquarters, which appeared to be a farm shed with a pickup truck parked out in front. In January, the microbank announced that it would be stepping away from plans to offer banking services to digital asset and cannabis companies. But, apparently unimpressed with this concession, the Fed has now ordered the bank to wind down in a manner that protects the bank's depositors and the deposit insurance fund. Farmington has also been prohibited from distributing any dividends or assets without approval from regulators. Caitlin Long writes, Wow, Moonstone Bank, aka Farmington Bank, is liquidating after the Fed issued a cease and buy a small existing bank and chain business plan, currently underway by crypto or crypto -adjacent companies. Bitcoin or TBH joked, Both residents of Farmington are quite concerned about this turn of events. Caitlin Long again responded and said, That's what happens with charter strips. Companies search for tiny banks, acquire them, and change the entire business plan thereby skirting all the requirements of starting a De Novo bank. Fed policy favored charter strips by holding them to a far, far lower standard than De Novo's. Speaking of Alameda and FTX, FTX and Genesys have reached an agreement on lending arrangements between the two firms and the disposal of collateral. Genesys will pay $175 million to Alameda Research to settle their claims. Genesys lawyers wrote in a court filing that, The settlement will, among other things, significantly smooth the path to confirmation of the Genesys debtors' Chapter 11 plan of reorganization, as well as eliminating the risks, expenses, and uncertainty associated with protracted litigation among the FTX debtors. FTX had originally filed the claim for $4 billion in May, Genesys counterclaims stating that they had $175 million stuck on FTX after it collapsed. In other words, both firms had outstanding loans with each other at the time of their respective bankruptcies. Genesys interim CEO Darar Aslim said, The terms of the settlement agreement provide significant and near -term benefits to the Genesys debtors and their creditors, in contrast to the uncertainty and expense of fulsome litigation of the FTX claims and Genesys claims. This settlement will extinguish all claims between the firms, which is potentially problematic given that they are significantly less than FTX had originally claimed from Genesys. Adam Cochrane wrote, Barry paid $175 million on a $4 billion debt position, and it means that Genesys claims from FTX are settled and can't go back to DCG and Grayscale? This is a damn good deal for DCG but horrible deal for FTX creditors. And indeed, FTX creditors are not happy. At a FTX creditor on Twitter says, FTX asked court to settle Genesys dispute for a $175 million Genesis claim, the release of a $175 million customer claim and near -worthless Alameda claims. Down from first $3 .9 billion to $2 billion asserted, this must be the worst deal to date, especially in the light of the new DCG -Genesis -DOJ investigation. Genesys claims are currently worth more than FTX's even as Genesys lender balances are inflated by the interest they earn from lending, among others, to Alameda. Genesys was repaid by Alameda quote -unquote with billions of FTX customer funds in 2022. Coins they hold may be directly traced to FTX customer deposits. We expect the UCC to object to this quote -unquote deal. Now, there is, of course, a different interpretation than just Barry negotiating a great deal. Napgener tweets, Again, my timeline is way off here. Everyone is raging at the FTX estate. I mean, basically, FTX is not going to settle for that little unless Genesys is truly cooked. Barry Silbert is in big trouble. Now, obviously, we don't know the answer to that, but it certainly doesn't look good and feels like a pretty reasonable open question. Lastly, today, we'll end on a little bit of a positive note. Coinbase had been granted approval to offer crypto futures to U .S. customers. Nearly two years after applying, the National Futures Association granted a license to Coinbase, which will now be authorized to operate CFTC -regulated futures markets. Coinbase joins the CME and the recently approved CBOE in offering the products legally onshore. Andrew Sears, the CEO of Coinbase Financial Markets, said, Offering U .S. investors access to secure and regulated crypto futures is key to unlocking growth and enabling broader participation in the crypto economy. CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith -Romero said, I have been vocal about the benefits of bringing appropriate crypto activities into the regulated space in order to protect customers but in a way that supports oversight, accountability, transparency and risk management. JP Morgan analyst said the license will open up new revenue opportunities and demonstrated, quote, the staying power of crypto markets in the U .S. They estimated that futures trading could represent hundreds of millions in new business to Coinbase. Coinbase product executive Greg Tussar said, We believe this is a watershed moment to be able to bring regulated crypto products to U .S. customers. Where regulations are clear and sensible, we will work with regulators to receive the authorizations needed to offer products that align with our purpose of using crypto to update the financial system to advance economic freedom and opportunity. Congrats to Coinbase on that license. And thank you to them for giving me something to close the weekly recap on that isn't just a legal decision. Anyways, guys, hope you are having a great late summer weekend. Enjoy it. Soak it in. I know for many of you, summer is the best. For me, it's always all about fall. So with that, I leave you to go grab some old painting from a goodwill so that I can do the ghost painting trend on TikTok with my family this weekend. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE HASH: Headlines | Top Stories of the Week 08-14-23
"You're listening to The Hash Headlines on the CoinDesk podcast network. Get caught up on this week's top stories from the hash crew. And just a reminder, CoinDesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Monday's top story. We are joined now by a special guest to help us unpack the latest development and its significance. Joining us is Ira Lee Sorkin. He's the former attorney for Bernie Madoff and a current partner at Mintz & Gold. Ira, how are you today? Good. Thank you. So first of all, top, I just want a high level, informed perspective on this SPF thing. You've seen some major cases play out in your day. Is there anything that is especially striking or notable about the SPF case here and now? What are your high level thoughts? High level thoughts? The media interest. Next question. All right. Let's do it. All right. Next up. Next up. Media interests. All right. So he's in jail now. He's waiting for his October court date behind bars. You gave a similarly concise comment to CoinDesk back in December saying that Sam Bankman -Fried should quote, just shut up already. Sorry, I paraphrased you, but basically it was shut up. Those were the two words of advice that you provided to Sam Bankman -Fried. I don't think he took that because the judge said he was really pushing the envelope with his communications with various witnesses. Is that still the piece of advice that you would share to Sam Bankman -Fried if you were his counsel now? I mean, there's no need for him once he was made bail for him to discuss the case, to share his thoughts about the case with any party other than his counsel. And quite frankly, the amount of documents, and I say this with the understanding that Minson Gold does not represent anyone in this case. We certainly don't represent Mr. Bankman -Fried. We don't represent any witnesses. We are not involved in the case. But the standard conduct that every defendant who makes bail is told, do not discuss the case, don't discuss it with any potential witnesses, don't discuss it certainly with the press. The only person you should talk to is your counsel. And there are ways to deal with other witnesses in the case, such as through counsel and a process called a Joint Defense Agreement, where the lawyers can talk to one another pursuant to an agreement, and it protects the attorney -client privilege, and it gives the opportunity for all counsel in the case, whether they are defendants or unindicted co -conspirators or conspirators, to be able to share information amongst the lawyers without their clients being present. So those are the general rules. There's nothing unusual about this particular case. When Sam Blankman -Fried made bail, he was specifically instructed not to discuss it with anyone, discuss the case with anyone, don't discuss it with any potential witnesses, don't share what you are given in the way of the mandatory discovery that the government's required to give to all defendants. And, of course, we have another situation going on in Washington, D .C., and in the Southern District or the Middle District of Florida, I think it's the Southern District of Florida, where a rather prominent individual was given the same instruction by the judge. It's standard, and that's the way it's done. If you violate the bail conditions, which Mr. Blankman -Fried violated according to the judge, then he faces the consequences and the consequences are jail. My understanding is that he's going to appeal it. He's got a very good lawyer representing him, and they're going to appeal it, but the chances of him getting out pending the trial, I think, are very slim. These are decisions made by the district court judge, who happens to be a judge of many years, very well respected, very smart, and the court of appeals is not going to question, I believe, his decision because he knows the record, and he knows what the bail conditions are.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1375: MAX KEISER: Bitcoin Will Rocket to $3,000,000
"Holla at your boy. Lots to cover as the crypto bloodbath continues in today's show. I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis, as literally there was a billion dollars worth of liquidations. We'll also be discussing SpaceX Bitcoin right down, sparks a massive confusion. The question is, did Elon and SpaceX really dump three hundred and seventy three million worth of Bitcoin, or is it nothing more than FUD? We'll also be discussing U .S. Congressman issues a warning on CBDC says they pose an existential threat to Western civilization. We'll also be discussing tornado cash loses its lawsuit against the U .S. government. I'll be breaking down this report, as well as breaking news. The judge grants the SEC request to file a motion for the appeal with the Ripple XRP case. And Max Kaiser, our fearless leader, quoting him here, Bitcoin has already and will continue to outperform everything else so spectacularly by one hundred X or more that anyone holding fiat stocks, bonds, gold and all the coins, property, etc., will literally be impoverished. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market. All this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good, crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my rumble channel at CryptonewsAlerts .net. Again, that's CryptonewsAlerts .net. And welcome y 'all just joining us. Now let's dive into our market watch and check out this insanity of this bloodbath currently going on in the Bitcoin market. You should be able to see on your screen. Let me know in the chat. Bitcoin's currently just holding on to twenty six thousand one hundred by a thread. We've already touched in the twenty five thousand range. We're still down six percent for the day. Ether down four percent, trading at sixteen hundred dollars. And some of the biggest losers naturally is some of these alts. XRP down thirteen percent, barely holding on to fifty cents. We have Solana down seven percent, trading at twenty one bucks and also XLM and Litecoin are in the blood red. And checking out CoinMarketCap .com, the current crypto market cap sits at one point zero five trillion dollars, but about seventy billion in volume in the past twenty four hours. So the volume is up roughly fifty eight percent. We've got the Bitcoin dominance at forty eight point three percent, with the ether dominance at nineteen percent even. And checking out the SOT 100 crypto gainers in the past twenty four hours, probably not much, just what you see here. We have AKT, which I have never heard of, up thirty three percent, trading at a dollar thirty nine, followed by Injective up seven percent, trading at seven dollars and seventy eight cents, followed by Tether Gold, which I have never heard of, barely in the green, trading just under nineteen hundred dollars. And virtually the entire crypto market is bleeding in in the red with the biggest losers, including Conflux, Litecoin and XRP for the past twenty four hours. And if you check out the top losers for the past week, yikes. I mean, we're talking about anywhere from ten to twenty, even as high as thirty percent losses, not looking good right now for the alts. And checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're currently rated to thirty seven, finally back in fear. We have been stuck in neutral and greed for the bulk of the year. We're finally back in fear. Yesterday was a fifty neutral, last week a fifty one and last month also a fifty in neutral. Now, welcome to everyone just joining us. Someone earlier asked in the chat and they're like, yo, smash that down arrow button, dislike this video because he's sharing predictions of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, there's a bloodbath in the market. And I responded like I'm not losing any sleep over this dump. All I do is continue to stack sats and I sleep like a baby. Why is that? Because I'm not an ish coiner. I have the most pristine cryptocurrency, decentralized, incorruptible, unconfiscatable crypto, and the only one that there is and that is Bitcoin. So why everyone else is crying and panicking? I'm stacking sats. I just spent an entire day at the pool with my daughter having a grand old time. I'm not sweating it whatsoever. And I think if you're a Bitcoiner, you feel the same way because one Bitcoin is still equivalent to what? One Bitcoin. Who cares? The fiat crap, you know, value equivalent. It's irrelevant. One Bitcoin will always be equivalent to one Bitcoin. And with that being shared, let's dive into today's Bitcoin technical analysis and check out some of these blood charts we're witnessing right now. Bitcoin stayed near two month lows at the August 18th Wall Street open as the markets came to terms with extreme liquidations, which we can see here not looking so great. And data from Cointelegraph and TradingView showed Bitcoin price action tracking sideways after a single day candle spawned an 8 % loss. Bitcoin saw a cascade of liquidations across the derivative markets, which is used as a financial weapon of mass destruction, with these accounting for an outsized majority amid the relatively lack spot selling. Quoting QCP Capital, In Deribbit, it is likely that a large account got wiped considering the immense short liquidation that occurred together. And as you can see here, shorts are getting wrecked. I mean, so many positions are getting wrecked, obviously. Now, QCP, like others noted that the market reaction to the alleged trigger are right down to SpaceX's $373 million on their Bitcoin holdings, which appeared to be exaggerated. And in our next story, we're going to be diving deeper into this. And is it just all FUD or is there any truth to this story? Now, the total liquidations challenge those seen in the immediate aftermath of the FTX exchange meltdown, the event which resulted in Bitcoin dip into two year lows and the current low of the cycle, which is $15 ,600 back in November of 2022. Quoting the Kibisi letter, This feels like yet another sign of drying liquidity markets have seen over the last few weeks. And for popular trader Rec Capital, here's what he had to share. Bitcoin formed its higher high at $31 ,000 on inclining volume, but the price formed the second half of its double top on the declining volume. And an accompanying chart showed trading volume on the daily timeframes, as Rec Capital warned that capitulation had likely not yet matched the previous selloffs. Quoting him again, Though there was a small breakout in the seller volume on this crash, it is still nowhere near the seller exhaustion volume levels of the previous Bitcoin reversals in which he explained. In fact, current seller volume would need to probably double to reach those seller exhaustion volume levels that prompted the price reversals in early and late March, as well as mid -June. Meanwhile, others were more optimistic as pointing out to the RSI. Every cycle, including the weekly Bitcoin RSI experiences, a fakeout of the bull market start line comes lasting longer than others, and every one of them makes a revisit to the 0 .382 Fibonacci retrace of the move. And with the latest drop, both of those things are now complete. And also QCP points out, We believe that a low now rests on Powell's speech at Jackson Hill next week. And so there you have it. How low do you think the Bitcoin price action is likely to go during this dump? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below, which leads us to our next story of the day. Let's discuss everything SpaceX and the FUD circulating in the markets right now. What exactly is causing this mass liquidation of over a billion dollars of positions to be liquidated just like that? Let's break it down and let me know your thoughts also in the comments. SpaceX's Bitcoin write down report on August 18th sparked mass confusion within the crypto community. The report published in the Wall Street Journal puzzled many. Keep in mind, that's the mainstream who questioned whether SpaceX held 373 million bucks worth of Bitcoin and sold it in 2021 and 2022, or whether they only reduced their Bitcoin exposure by the same amount. Several social media outlets reported that SpaceX had sold this entire Bitcoin holdings. Maybe that's what crashed the market, while others expressed uncertainty, claiming they were unable to confirm the amount based on the wording of the report. As pointed out here, I actually read the Wall Street Journal report, and I think Bitcoin magazine is wrong. Yes, the report claims that SpaceX marked down the value of the Bitcoin by 373 million, but that doesn't mean they sold 373 million and sold some, but selling some doesn't necessarily mean they have no Bitcoin left. And I think they make a great point. Then Elon Musk, well, he revealed this in 2021 that SpaceX was holding Bitcoin as does Tesla on his balance sheet. And while Tesla's Bitcoin holdings were made public, there were no estimations around the SpaceX Bitcoin holdings, which have been key to the ongoing confusion. Tesla once held 1 .5 billion worth of BTC purchased during the bull market, but revealed it has sold 72 % of his holdings in quarter two of 2022. The SpaceX write -off claims were also believed to be one of the key catalysts behind the 2000 Bitcoin price drop, although several others denied that being the cause. Musk hasn't addressed the issue as of yet, but the market FUD made him target of Bitcoin proponents who questioned his strategy of buying high and selling low, while a few others called it market FUD. What are your thoughts? Do you think this is nothing more than mainstream FUD published by the Wall Street Journal specifically to tank the markets? Very interesting thought, right? One Reddit user wrote that Musk is running out of cash across all of his companies, suggesting that Musk might sell all of his Bitcoin and doge within the next six months. And users on X also called out Musk for his paper hands, which we commonly make fun of him for quoting them here. Musk appears to be going to toe to toe against Bitcoin and his ex empire. I wish him well, although I don't think this is wise. That's coming from Dr. Jeff Ross. While the dilemma around SpaceX Bitcoin holdings continues, Bitcoin proponents advocated traders to huddle Bitcoin and not fall for the market FUD. I think that's a great point. As pointed out here, SpaceX didn't sell his Bitcoin and neither did Elon Musk. Now sit back, relax, and just some intelligent guys getting $700 million in longs. Don't leverage, be patient, and just huddle. Sage advice, as we all know, huddle be thy name. And when in doubt, try to relax. Get your mind off of the price action. Like I said earlier, I spent the entire day in the pool, soaking up those sun rays here in Puerto Rico, and I'm not losing any sleep over these dumps. I just will continue stacking sats and counting my blessings because I'm a Bitcoiner and not an ishcoiner. And again, the ishcoins are the ones that get wrecked when Bitcoin drops 8%. Some of these altcoins will drop 10, 20, maybe as high as 30%. So that's the wreckage, you know, comes with the territory, no risk, no reward. Obviously, altcoins are very risky, but hence, when they pump, they could be very rewarding at the same time. So you got to find an equilibrium, right? Anyways, now let's discuss the existential threat, says Congressman regarding central bank digital currencies, better known as CBDCs. Let's break this baby down. And again, welcome to everyone just joining. Make some noise in live chat. Let me know where you're tuning in from. This is a very good warning coming from US Congressman Warren Davidson, warning that the central bank digital currencies, better known as CBDCs, can result in a dystopian future. Facts. The Ohio Republican tells his 80 ,000 ex -followers he believes that CBDCs could transform money into a powerful means of governmental control and plans to introduce legislation to criminalize the development of these types of assets. So everyone, please show this Congressman Warren Davidson some love, because I don't know many other congressmen coming out sharing that. And we all know this is fact because we're bitcoiners, quitting him here to make the point crystal clear. I am working on legislation to criminalize designing, building, testing, developing, or establishing a central bank digital currency. CBDC poses an existential threat to Western civilization by corrupting money into a tool for coercion and control. Now, sound money serves as a stable store of value and an efficient means of exchange. Now, Davidson also says he wants to prohibit CBDCs because they threaten other digital assets such as bitcoin and pitting the development of beneficial financial technology, quitting him again. Central bank digital currency poses a serious threat of all digital assets. As I said at a flyover fintech, many people wrongfully conflate even bitcoin with a CBDC. I'd say the average individual knows no difference because they're completely ignorant to cryptocurrency. But if you watch the show, you already know CBDCs are pure evil programmable government money and bitcoin is the antidote. Now, at least most agree that CBDC is evil, the financial equivalent of the Death Star. No, that's true. Now, don't become an accomplice to anyone designing, building, testing, developing, or establishing CBDC. Banning CBDC is essential to America's fintech future. Davidson calls out several entities currently working on CBDCs, including Ripple Labs. That's right. Tokenized assets are not the problem, it's the people. Entities, including the Fed, Ripple, and Consensus and influencers are actively working on CBDC projects. So it's no secret. The congressman says the CBDCs are the complete opposite of decentralized finance and vows to prevent their adoption, quoting him again. Current CBDC versions are centrally managed permission database dependent on digital ID. This is the opposite of DeFi, where the entire computing architecture is designed to protect privacy and enable permissionless peer -to -peer transactions. 100 plus countries are studying, developing, or implementing the same creepy surveillance state technology as China. So there you have it. You have been warned. I warn you virtually every single day on the show to stay away from CBDCs, as Bitcoin is the antidote, and we don't trust the government, and we don't trust their fiat money. Why would we trust their digital version of government fiat money? It would make no sense whatsoever. But anyways, fam, now let's discuss the conclusion regarding the tornado cash lawsuit. Unfortunately for the community, the government won. Then we'll discuss the latest with the Ripple XRP appeal, followed by the latest predictions from Max Keiser, suggesting Bitcoin will continue to outpace every other asset and climb another 100x from the current price, virtually predicting a $3 million Bitcoin price action. And then we'll dive into our live Q &A. So yeah, let's discuss tornado cash. And how many of you have ever used it before? Do let me know. Tornado cash is the most well -known crypto mixing service sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control last August. The decision was a result of a long -lasting spat between the regulator and the crypto mixer dating back to at least 2018, when two persons of special interest in the US government were found to be using its services. Now, although crypto mixers do indeed appeal to cyber criminals, their main purpose is to grant extra privacy to those who want it. In order for a crypto mixer to work as intended, the number of beginning users must be much higher than the amount of bad actors using it, with no sizable amounts of assets to mix. The operation falls flat. Now, is this with the distinction in mind that Coinbase supported tornado cash's appeal against the sanctions? Well, as pointed out here, the rights are rarely secured on a path that is always up, and we will continue to believe plaintiff's challenge to OFAC's tornado cash action is right. We have always known that the Fifth Circuit Review is required to resolve these issues. So this is ultimately Coinbase pushing back and saying, hey, this isn't right. The government shouldn't be allowed to do this. Now, also keep in mind that according to the court documents, Torquato Cash's argument focused on its definition as a decentralized open source software project made of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. However, the minting of torn tokens administrated by the tornado cash DAO led the government to believe otherwise. And although DAO is a technically autonomous, the court argued that whoever holds the most funds has the most voting power and therefore re -centralizing decisions in a roundabout way. The case was presided by Judge Pittman of the U .S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, and motivating his decision to turn down the lawsuit, Judge Pittman stated, in the eyes of the U .S. government, tornado cash is indeed an entity with a property interest, and therefore the OFAC sanctions of the crypto mixer do not qualify as governmental overreach. Quoting them here, this case is about tornado cash, but the parties disagree on how to characterize tornado cash. Plaintiffs argue that the designation of tornado cash exceeds the department's statutory authority over foreign nationals' interests in property and violates the free speech clause. The government, on the other hand, argues that tornado cash is an entity that may be designated and that it has a property interest in smart contracts. So unless further arguments are brought forth, tornado cash will remain on the OFAC's specially designated national list, which prevents the entity from doing business with the banking sector and a wide range of businesses. So there you have it. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this is unlawful and overreach of the government bodies in the SEC? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. Now let's discuss the latest with the Ripple lawsuit versus the SEC. As many of you know, Ripple Labs did get a slight victory, and it was determined by Judge Torres that XRP was not being sold as an unregistered security, as the SEC deemed. And so, however, Gary Gensler is not accepting that the SEC is not accepting the verdict from the judge and is ultimately going to be appealing this decision. So let's now break this one down, shall we? Yeah, very interesting indeed. Check it out. Judge Torres has granted a request from the US SEC to file a motion for leave to file for the interlocutory appeal in the case against Ripple Labs. The security regulator sent a letter to Torres August 9th Well, duh. But according to the US law, this appeal occurs when a ruling by trial court is appealed while other aspects of the case are still proceeding. The decision allows the SEC to file a motion by August 18th, which is today, requesting permission to bring a case to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Ripple will also be able to file an opposition to the motion. Now, the decision comes just a few hours after Ripple Labs voiced opposition to a potential appeal for the case. Ripple lawyers put forth three main arguments in opposition to the SEC request. They first argued that an appeal requires a pure question of law and that the SEC's request raises no new legal issues that need to be renewed. They also argued that the SEC's claim of an incorrect court ruling on the matter is not sufficient and that an immediate appeal will not advance the termination of litigation proceedings. Quoting their CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, reminder, the request for appeal, even if granted, doesn't change the fact that XRP is not a security. That's not up for debate or trial, but the SEC continues to claim that Chris and I acted recklessly in believing that XRP is not a security. Yada, yada, yada. Now, Torres ruled on July 13th that Ripple's native XRP token is not a security when distributed in public sales, aka exchanges, but that the ruling considered XRP a security and institutional sales. Interesting. The case against Ripple has been ongoing since December of 2020. Holy moly. When the SEC sued Ripple and his two chief executives, including Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larson, over allegations that the company was offering an unregistered security. And in a recent interview with Bloomberg, Garlinghouse shared his belief that the SEC would face a lengthy appeal process, putting him here, as a matter of law, the law of the land right now is that XRP is not a security. And until there is an opportunity for the SEC to file the appeal, which could take years, frankly, we are very optimistic. He noted, and according to Garlinghouse, an appeal against the retail sales ruling would only further solidify the decision that Torres made. So there you have it. You also have to keep in mind for this to go to the appeal and do a whole new trial could take years. So in the interim, meaning in the meantime, meanwhile, XRP is not a security unregistered security being sold on the exchanges. So all the exchanges have the permissions to relist it. And in fact, a lot of the major exchanges have already relisted XRP for this reason. However, if they have another trial, let's hypothetically say three years from now, and after another trial, the judge changes the ruling and it's deemed an unregistered security, then it can be like deja vu all over again, like going back to 2020, it gets delisted from all the exchanges. And to me, that is very scary. And you can thank No Clarity Gary for that one. So how do you think this is likely to play out? Do you think the SEC is just wasting their time? I mean, I personally look at it this way. The SEC has unlimited resources. They have all the money in the world, the money printer, you know what I mean? Will continue to go burp for their needs. And so they can virtually do anything they want. I think it's overreach. Obviously, it's the crypto crackdown. Unfortunately, it's likely to continue. However, I think the lawsuit against Coinbase and Binance, et cetera, can help set precedent, just as the XRP lawsuit has. And I think that thus far, it's been a win for crypto because the SEC is not getting their way. And of course, they're not going to be happy. Of course, they're going to appeal it. Of course, Gary is not going to give us what we want and protect the investors whatsoever because they're just protecting their own pockets at the end of the day. And that's just the reality of the life that we live in here in the crypto sphere. But with that being shared, fam, let me know your thoughts. And now let's break down our main story of the day. And that's Max Kaiser predicting that the Bitcoin price will rise to $3 million. We don't care if Bitcoin is crashing because we're in this for the long haul. So cry me a river, y 'all. But with that being shared, yeah, first, let's start with this quote he recently shared on Twitter dated August 11th, which got 62 ,000 views. He wrote, Bitcoin has already and will continue to outperform everything else so spectacularly by 100 X or more that anyone holding fiat stocks, bonds, gold, all the coins, property, et cetera, will literally be impoverished. Very powerful words. Now, at the time he made this prediction, Bitcoin was close to 30 ,000. So what is 100 X times 30 ,000? That's $3 million per coin. And now quoting him from a more recent interview he did with Swan, maybe about a week or so ago, I posted this on X, formerly known as Twitter on, let's see, August 12th. So the following day after he made that post, it got 131 ,000 views, fam. And here's what Max Kaiser had to share. With Bitcoin, it's kind of the end of price discovery because everything will eventually be priced in Bitcoin. Everything goes to zero against Bitcoin. Bet you heard that one before. And so for someone like myself who has been following this for 40 years, the finance markets, technology, Bitcoin is the holy grail. It is the end all preach. I would say my compatriot in all of this is Michael Saylor. When you hear Michael Saylor talk, he talks about the aesthetics of Bitcoin, the beauty of Bitcoin. And he speaks about it in a way I think carries the torch from the Max and Stacey from 2011. Now he started buying it, I guess, when it was 10 or $12 ,000 or so in 2020 era. So we were there from 2011 to 2020. And I think he's kind of carried the torch from 2020 in a lot of ways and introduced Bitcoin to massive pools of capital, including to Elon Musk. Note that. I'm surprised that more companies haven't followed his lead, giving the breakup of inflation that we have had exactly as Michael Saylor predicted. The melting ice cube, as he called it, at the exact time and exactly what happened. Well, I guess we can say now we're in an era where BlackRock and these other major institutions are now looking at Bitcoin. So his work on the institutional level, I guess, is bearing fruit. Now, three years later, I see in the Middle East, they are starting to recognize Bitcoin. So that's a huge pool of capital. Yeah. And I think that all that oil money will find its way into Bitcoin and be a huge catalyst for higher prices. So it's a natural way for the oil industry to diversify their portfolio because Bitcoin is essentially energy and the energy eventually gets priced in Bitcoin. And there is a marriage between these two in a big way. So there you have it, his first big prediction that the oil industry is going to diversify into Bitcoin and he continues. So I think that's kind of the answer. I have always been fascinated by price discovery in markets and the architecture of how markets work under the hood. And Bitcoin is such a pristine, perfect money. And I think it's something that humans have been searching for since forever. And now we're seeing it change society on a really fundamental level with the introduction of Bitcoin. Now, a lot of people are freaking out because of it, because it destroys the status quo, preach. And a lot of people who have been waiting for it to come along and had the faith that humanity can be saved. Thank God. I honestly feel humanity would be doomed without Bitcoin. All we have to look forward to is CBDCs and the enslavement of the human race. Now, anyways, continuing, they see Bitcoin in those terms. So you have this split going on, which is very exciting. So it just continues on and on. And how could you not be interested in it? I think the people who were into it earlier, aka Roger Ver, and walked away just never got it from the beginning. Once it's categorized as an asset class, we have nothing to do except position ourselves in this asset class. So either we are going to have a small position or a big position, but we cannot ignore it. We cannot not have a position. Now, listen closely here. So even 1 % of that multi -hundred trillion dollar funds available moves the needle on Bitcoin and it moves it up considerably. He's referring to the five, six, seven hundred dollar or five, six, seven hundred trillion dollar total addressable market. And he continues. So if we get into the five or 10 % range, then you start to really see a raise ahead to the seven figure type predictions that people have been making, including myself, because it is an asset class. But on the flip side, we have what we saw in the gold market, which is the ability to control price discovery and manipulate the prices. And it's real through the derivatives markets. Pay very close attention to what he shares about derivatives here, fam. This is how the powers that be and the central bankers continue to manipulate the precious metal market. So the price of gold has been lagging inflation for 20 years because the government around the world doesn't like gold making their fiat money look bad. So they make it easy for the huge funds to manipulate the price of gold and to scalp and to continuously skim profits off of gold, which is what they do almost every single day. You can watch it and see it. In fact, it's pretty clear. And they are very good at keeping the price of gold and silver down. There's something like for every ounce of silver, there's probably 50 ounces worth of derivatives floating in various exchanges around the world that are used to keep the price of silver down because governments don't want gold to race ahead to draw the capital out of their fiat money scam and into gold. Makes a great point, right? And with Bitcoin, we have the ability to pull our private keys, which is not really available with gold. Technically, people can take delivery of gold on these exchanges, but there's never been an organized attempt to do so preach. And also, let's not forget that the majority of the gold in the world is hoarded by the central bank. So keep that in mind, fam. Anyways, back to Max's quote. We tried to do it a few years ago. It crashed JP Morgan by gold and silver because after the 2008 financial crisis when JP Morgan ended up buying Bear Stearns effectively for nothing, they inherited this multimillion short silver position that Bear Stearns was managing at the behest of presumably the government. The government likes to stay involved. And so I did some calculations and it became clear if this short position was not covered and the price of silver got to $60 or $70 an ounce, it would bankrupt JP Morgan Chase. So we started this crash JP Morgan buy silver campaign. We got the price of silver from 15 bucks up to $50. What a legend. So we got it up to the old Hunt Brothers $50 level. And then the Fed of course came in and they changed the laws overnight to make it possible for these banks to have and carry much greater short positions on silver. So they printed up a lot of paper silver derivatives and they stopped the run on their bank and the price went back down to $15 or so. So we have seen that it is possible to force capitulation to the silver market, but at the end of the day, because of the ability to pull private keys, it is not like it is with Bitcoin. I don't think it'll ever succeed. Whereas with Bitcoin, you can pull your private keys. So there you have it. Very powerful words coming from Max Kaiser. And that's 100 % accurate. And why I don't trust the precious metals myself. Now, if Bitcoin and cryptocurrency didn't exist, I'd be all in on gold and silver because what other option would there be? But because there is Bitcoin, there is no second best as Michael Saylor once said, like real talk. Am I going to trust my life savings in gold when the powers that be can just manipulate it on a whim? In fact, they have been caught doing so, so many times. How many times has JP Morgan had to pay billion dollar or hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for being caught manipulating the precious metal market? I think that will continue. Now, Bitcoin is the only incorruptible money, hence why it is perfect money. There is a finite limited supply. And I mean, there's no greater alternative. There is no second best quoting the great Michael Saylor. And don't forget to check out crypto news alerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 643:Ripples Legal Dance, CFTCs Crypto Focus, and Shibarium Stumbles
"To those who visit Mickey D's for their favorite breakfast item and then go somewhere else for coffee, give this Mickey D's brew a second chance. The glow up was real. Try any size iced coffee brewed with 100 % Arabica beans for just 99 cents until 11 a .m. and pair it with a savory Sausage McMuffin with Egg for $2 .79. Prices and participation may vary, cannot be combined with any other offer. Good evening, and welcome to The Crypto Overnight -er. I'm Nick Ademus, and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Thursday, August 17th, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight -er, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. First, though, I need to let you know my anniversary is coming up. My wife and I are going to be heading out of town, so I would not expect any new episodes on Monday the 21st through Wednesday the 23rd. Tonight, however, we delve deep into Ripple's courtroom battles with the SEC. We'll explore the shifting regulatory roles as the CDFTC targets crypto scams and witness the turbulence surrounding Shaberium's launch. Bittrex Global makes a significant shift in their regulatory stance, while PayPal ventures further into the crypto realm with Ledger. Finally, Dubai's Vara puts a damper on OPNX's operations as the platform faces heavy fines. A federal judge has permitted the U .S. Securities Exchange Commission to argue its right to appeal against a ruling. This ruling stated that Ripple did not breach securities laws when making XRP accessible to retail traders via exchanges. Judge Annalisa Torres of the U .S. District Court for the Southern District of New York approved the request. The SEC has until Friday to file the motion. Ripple then has until September 1st to respond, and then the SEC can reply by September 8th. If the SEC's motion succeeds, they can then seek permission from an appeals court to file the actual appeal. Ripple's chief legal officer, Stuart Alderati, expressed the company's opposition to this request. The price of XRP remained relatively stable despite that order, with a minor 4 % drop over the last 24 hours. The SEC's decision to appeal is significant. It indicates the agency's determination to set a precedent in how digital assets like XRP are going to be classified and regulated. The outcome of this case could have far -reaching implications for the cryptocurrency industry. The SEC's persistence in this matter underscores the regulatory challenges facing the crypto space. It's a clear sign that regulatory bodies are keen on establishing guidelines and rules for digital assets. Bill Hughes, senior counsel and director of global regulatory matters at Consis, commented on the SEC's uphill battle. He mentioned that the legal standard is tough to meet, and the specifics of this case do not favor the SEC's argument for an appeal. Dave Rodman is the founder and managing partner of the Rodman Law Group. He added that even if the SEC wins appeal from both Judge Torres and the Second Court of Appeals, the circuit court might halt all proceedings until the appeal is resolved. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple's CEO, in a recent interview expressed confidence in the ongoing legal process. He believes the SEC would face a lengthy appeal process and remains optimistic about Ripple's position. The broader crypto community is closely watching the developments in this case. The final outcome could set a precedent for how other cryptocurrencies are viewed and regulated in the U .S. The case underscores the need for clear regulatory frameworks for digital assets, ensuring innovation thrives while protecting investors. While Ripple stands firm against the SEC, another regulatory body, the CFTC, is stepping up its game against crypto scams. Hit that follow button to stay updated on the regulatory dance between the CFTC and the SEC.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from Fred Rispoli Interview - The SEC's Appeal of the Ripple XRP Ruling Explained! Coinbase & Grayscale vs SEC Cases
"This content is brought to you by Link2, which makes private equity investment easy. Link2 allows you to get access to companies before they go public, before they do an IPO. Within their portfolio includes fintech companies, artificial intelligence companies, as well as crypto companies. Some of the big crypto companies in their portfolio include Circle, Ripple, Polysign, Chainalysis, Dapper Labs, Ledger, and many more. So it's a great way to diversify your portfolio to get access to equity. So you may invest in crypto, stocks, ETFs, but now you can get access to equity in these companies before they go public. And obviously that can be very beneficial from an ROI standpoint. So if you'd like to learn more about Link2 and diversifying your portfolio, please visit the link in the description. Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. With me today is attorney Fred Rispoli, who's the founder of Hodl Law. Fred, great to have you back on. Oh, thanks for having me on, Tony. It's early over here on the West coast, but I do this for you because I love you. I appreciate it, man. I hope you had some coffee. I'm about to throw a bunch of questions at you. So Fred, you know, last week, we heard from the SEC that they're filing a motion to be able to appeal some of the rulings by Judge Torres. Can you break that down for us? What are they trying to appeal and what would be the next steps? Yeah, I think before I answer your question, the first thing for XRP holders in the community is take a deep breath and relax. Don't flip out because you saw this get filed. This is very normal in the course of litigation. And, you know, there's always seven different directions litigation can go and there's a lot better ways it could have gone. But this was the most likely event is that if it wasn't going to be now, it was going to be at the end of trial. So just take a deep breath. You know, the good news is is everything in play right now in the sense of it's good for the XRP. XRP itself is not a security programmatic sales are not securities transactions. So that's the law until it isn't. So deep breath, you know, go forward. And then, you know, to answer the question. Well, you know what? I forgot what you asked me. What was that again? Oh, so so the SEC didn't actually appeal yet, but they filed a motion to be able to appeal, right? Can you tell us about that? What's the difference? You know, why can't they just appeal right away? Sure. So, you know, when you are going to appeal, you usually want a final order, and that's not given until the very end of the case. The case isn't going to be in that final order spot until sometime in the fall of twenty four, because the trial's not scheduled until sometime the second quarter of twenty four. It's going to be a long trial. And so once you get in an order when everything's over, that's when you get your right to appeal. Everybody can appeal any part of the case. Now, because the some of the issues were disposed of its summary judgment, Ripple won some and the SEC won some, that it's kind of basically hanging around until the end of trial. SEC doesn't like that and they want to file their interlocutory appeal. But you have to meet certain bars in order to get that done. You have to have the court allow it and then you have to have the second second circuit say, OK, we'll take it to Judge Torres could say, no, you're right, SEC. Let's go ahead and get this up to the second circuit or at least I will approve it. And the second circuit could say, no, we want to wait for whatever reason. And we're not even they don't have to give a reason. They can just say request denied. So to start out at the first stage, the SEC is asking the court, let us go ahead and get this briefing going and we want to ask you if we can do this. So this first letter is just letting the court know they're going to do it. And, you know, barring the court, I don't even know if the court's allowed to say no. This is a letter. This isn't a brief that we saw. What's going to happen is she'll set a briefing schedule and that'll go forward. I think really the only thing that might be at issue is the briefing schedule from what the SEC proposes. Ripple might it'll be interesting when Ripple comes back with their letter on Wednesday, they might propose a very much longer briefing schedule. They'll be the SEC now saying, no, we need extra time. Let's get this thing started. And so that'll be interesting to see what they do there. It'll also be interesting to see if they say, yeah, you know, do they agree with it and say, we're going to appeal what we lost as well, or are they going to oppose the whole thing? Yeah, that makes sense. So next steps would be, like you said, Judge Torres could say, OK, I agree or I don't agree. And then even if she does agree, Second Circuit could say, no, let's wait till this is all wrapped up. That's kind of the gist of it. Pretty much. And we'll see, you know, what the briefing schedule comes out with. And, you know, the SEC has a very quick briefing schedule they propose, and it's in line with what the rules of court are. But that rarely was the was the rule during litigation. In fact, in almost everything, they both agreed the SEC and Ripple to extended briefing. And, you know, both sides are only too happy for it, because the SEC, as you can, as one can tell, from watching this litigation, wasn't that prepared to handle all the attacks that Ripple threw at it. And obviously, the lawyers on Ripple's side were all too OK with getting extra time to really get their ducks in a row on the briefing side. So I would think that the briefing schedule is going to be a little bit longer is what is ultimately agreed to. And, you know, we're not going to get a decision from the judge until maybe October -ish, end of October. And, you know, we'll have to see what goes there. But I'm happy to speculate on what the judge will do if that's the next question. Yeah, I mean, so let's say in a scenario that the SEC does get the approval to do their appeal and so forth, and it goes all the way there. What would be the timeline for that? Is it also like this is going to be drawn out over the next two years? It wouldn't be that long. It could be a little bit shorter than the average. I'm about to tell you, just because this is it's an interlocutory appeal. If the Second Circuit takes it, that means that the court had the Second Circuit is getting something from the Southern District, which is, you know, a big financial hub district court in in our country. And so, you know, the Second Circuit knows that this is an important case. The Second Circuit knows, hey, the judge actually allowed this. Most judges would probably deny interlocutory appeals. If you're not even if you're going by as a general matter, just because they're messy, because the whole case isn't finished. And so the Second Circuit could say, all right, well, the court allowed us to take it. We're looking at it, it is important, we're going to take it. So they usually have been running like a nine to 10 month runtime between a decision and the end of briefing. So what will happen if the Second Circuit takes it is they'll say we've accepted. Here's the briefing schedule. The parties do their opening brief on this day, their oppositions, and then their replies. I have to re -review my appellate law. I don't know the rules on replies on that third extra brief if there is one. It could just be opening brief in opposition, especially if both sides bring issues to the appeal. The and then so that'll take a solid at least two to three months to get that briefing schedule done. So I can't see if everything happens lightning fast. I can't see the briefing being all complete until early 24. You know, unless there's an expedited briefing schedule. So you're still not looking at a decision from the Second Circuit until summer of 24, you know, maybe even the end of 24. So even if all of this goes at a lightning quick pace, you've still got a before we'd hear from the Second Circuit. And then to clarify, the SEC is looking to appeal not that the asset XRP is intrinsically a security, but rather the program programmatic sales, right? Is that correct? Well, they put something in their letter saying that, and that doesn't mean they're held to that specifically. And I would just say to caution anybody that's too happy about, you know, not seeing them attack XRP is a security or XRP is not a security in in and of itself. You know, they could, in their objection to what they lost of the you know, there are two out of the three buckets that they lost programmatic sales and other sales like awards to employees and gifting of XRP. They could sneak in the fact that they're going to argue XRP is in itself a security by the very nature, which is why the court got it wrong. Because you have to consider it a security in the context of programmatic sales. I'm not saying it's a good argument, right? I'm just saying that there's nothing that would prevent them from doing that and kind of sliding it in there. And so I wouldn't bank on the fact that that can't ever go away. At least that they can't argue it based on the posture right now. You know, I think it's a loser argument. And it would be hard for even the Second Circuit to say yes, this asset itself is a security. But I don't put it past the SEC trying to argue it as a side issue in the appeal. Hmm. Yeah, they could come up with anything. I wouldn't put anything past them. And so hard question for you, you know, as far as probabilities, let's say, you know, this appeal or motion to appeal getting denied versus getting approved. What would you say are the chances of denial versus approval? I'm leaning towards denial right now. What would change is if Ripple files their response. And for whatever reason, they've done the calculation on their end. And they say, listen, we know the appeal is coming after the trial with Brad and Chris. And we think we want to just get it out of the way now. You know, if I was at Ripple, I would say delay, delay, delay that now that you're in the driver's seat, but maybe there's reasons why they might want to push it. So if they say yes, we agree, let's get this up. But we also want to bring our our loss to the table. So go ahead and certify that as well. Then I think, you know, there's a I don't even think it's 100%. But I think there's a 70 80 % chance she grants it if ripple joins in and says, put our thing in there too. And we agree, let's do it. If ripple opposes it and denies it, I think there's a I think it flips the other way. And there's a 60 70 % chance she deny it just because you get into a big mess of the trial itself. You know, on the one hand, if ripple if there is an appeal and ripple wins on everything, then the trial would be over and there would be no trial because the whole case would be over. But on the on the other hand, obviously, there would be more to do at the trial if she gets overturned on the programmatic sales. If you play it out a little bit, is it really that much? It's the same. There is a lot of the same evidence. There are different things. I mean, it definitely would have an impact on the length of the trial. But I think that, you know, the court says, listen, we've got this trial coming. We've got, you know, these these issues that are appealable and not appealable because they're going forward. We're sorry. We've got these issues where only some of them are related to the way the trial is going to be. The others have taken off the table by by summary judgment. Let's just get everything done. And then you can have one clean appeal at the end, because at the end of that, you know, Brad and Chris have their rights at issue, too, because they whatever their trial is going to be about, you know, they don't want to have to do it in multiple rounds and stages. And they also don't want to be put in limbo. And so because you've got those two individuals, let me put it this way. I think if there was no Brad and Chris, and it would have gone into the remedies phase at this point, because there would be no trial against and individuals we're talking about damages, then there would be more of a much higher likelihood of an interlocutory appeal being granted. But because we have actual people being held out on these charges, I think the judge is going to more lean towards getting that tried. Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, with the trial with Brad and Chris, does that impact, you know, the SEC's appealing anyway? Or is this kind of like a separate thing, branching off from, you know, what has happened? Because it doesn't seem like they're trying to do anything there, but they're involved to your point. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's derivative of the main set of facts. So we have what Ripple did, and how they use sold, distributed XRP. And then how that happened in the case. And then what did Ripple do? And then what did these two do as the, you know, CEO and chairman of Ripple? And it's the small potatoes of the case in the sense of, yeah, there's definitely money at stake. And it's not small potatoes to Brad and Chris. But the legal issues were the were the key facts of the case. And those have already been decided. So, you know, I always think a lot of other legal minds on this was adding Brad and Chris was just to intimidate and scare and there was a very weak case. So I don't think the SEC is as invested in going after those two as they are now. Unless it gets a little bit better if say programmatic sales and these other distributions are thrown back into the mix, because then there's more they can, the SEC could in front of a jury and say, well, you know, again, this is assuming that the appeal and Judge Torres is overturned. The jury can see a lot more information about the evidence about programmatic sales in addition to institutional sales. So there's more to kind of throw at the wall. But you know, I think because the main issues have been decided by law, that's kind of it's kind of something that's just still hanging out there that the SEC probably wishes it wasn't Let's say the scenario where Ripple does decide to appeal, you know, the institutional sales and to find they would have to pay there. Do you think they have a strong chance of winning that or reversing that? I would be hesitant to be more confident until I gave myself a better review of who's on the fair. It may not even be accurate, but it's my perception. And, you know, I think it's important to look at things kind of the way they are and not just, you know, how you would look at it from a legal perspective only, which is how old are the judges that are going to get the case in the Second Circuit? Because and I haven't done this breakdown yet. I want to I don't have any time, but it looks like when you start seeing these crypto cases, the judges that are closer to their 40s and 50s rule one way and the judges that are in their 70s and 80s rule another way. And, you know, it's unfair. And, you know, I'm not saying, you know, there's I'm sure there's judges in their 40s and 50s that have no idea how crypto works. And I'm sure there's know how it works and can understand the concepts. But, you know, it's undeniable that there has been at least anecdotally, from what I've seen, you know, the older the judge, the more they're inclined to say, or at least go with the SEC's theory. So the way the Second Circuit works is there's a lot of judges, and three of them will get picked out of a number. You know, I think it's three will get picked assigned to the case. And, you know, we always talk about how lucky Ripple was in the XRP community with Judge Torres. You know, you got to get lucky or at least in a good shot again with the panel that's picked on the Second Circuit to really figure out where it's going to go. Because that's just going to be critical to who the mindset of the judges that are taking the case. But I do think if we're talking about it just from the law, I do think I think what the appeal would happen is potentially going well, you know what, I'd have to think about a little more right now, I'd probably be 50 -50 that they would just be inclined to keep what Judge Torres already did and affirm. The other possibility being I think it would get flipped one way or the other, which is it's not like they would say institutional sales were actually good, but now programmatic sales were securities. I think the Second Circuit would go if they're going to reverse anything, everything was a securities transaction or nothing was. Wow. So, you know, like you said at the beginning, right now the ruling, the law is XRP is not a programmatic sales are not securities offerings. And we'll see how all these attempted appeals by the FCC go. And it's still going to be something that's a year away for the most part and not something that's happening next week or next month, right? Exactly. Bottom line, everything is as it is from the July 13th order, and that's going to likely stand for at least a year. Now, there are ways things can get fast tracked, but I think even if they're fast tracked as maximum as possible, I think end of spring 24 maybe is the earliest you could get a response on this interlocutory appeal. It's just not anything that's going to be happening anytime soon, certainly not by the end of this year. And, you know, my hope and I think the easiest way to solve everything is to get legislation. And so if that's why I'm thinking if I'm Ripple Labs, I would try and delay everything as much as possible, because if you can get everything out to beyond the election, if there's a change in administration, there'll be a change in the guard at the SEC. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean good things will happen, but it's much more likely good things will happen than where we sit now. Oh, for sure. Now, we've seen that many folks in the industry are using this ruling, even members of Congress, you know, talking about the ruling and the need for regulations and so forth to push their bills through. But Coinbase in particular, we know their chief legal officers have been meeting, teaming up, I'm sure sharing notes as, you know, the secondary market sales ruling case law can be used in their defense as well. And we saw a ton of people file amicus briefs on behalf of Coinbase. You know, what are you seeing on that front and any thoughts on what's been happening? Well, I would say first off credit to the entire Ripple community, the entire XRP community, especially led by John Deaton on the as the first of the first to kind of go in on that amicus ruling. And then that helped trigger the way for all the other amicus briefs in the Ripple Labs case, because that was not really a thing beforehand, you just didn't have that in the district court. And so once that started to roll, then you've seen it happen out a lot of other cases, the Coinbase insider trading case, there were a lot of amicus briefs. And now here in Coinbase, the Coinbase case, I mean, that's all from, you know, Ripple and the XRP community. So everybody needs to pat themselves on the back for that one. You know, with that, you know, I think that it's very good, it's, it's good for the district court judge to see all that because then the district court knows that this isn't your typical case, this isn't your average situation, there's something wrong here with the way the SEC is on a procedural ground that Ethereum case, you know, the judge in that one said, you know, I'm not going to do anything here, because you don't have standing, but it would really be great if the SEC actually gave some guidelines instead of their piecemeal litigation approach. So you know, that is a, at least a recognition, another recognition that judges are kind of getting tired with the way the SEC is doing this, because it's not really the way it should be done. You know, they've got rulemaking for a reason. And so bringing it back to the Coinbase case, you know, I don't have a lot of love for Coinbase, because we are suing them right now over the songbird airdrop, and the flare issues that they fail to do, you know, they're trying to dismiss the case and not let it see the light of day. So I'm not gonna lie and say I was tempted to file some type of amicus brief going the other way and actually being for the SEC. But I was like, you know what, you got to put the dislike of what Coinbase did to customers over the actual issues that they're fighting about there. So I, you know, I kind of, I just bit my tongue and let it play out. And I do hope they win. You know, I really do hope they beat the SEC on this one, but I'm not a fan. I don't, a motion to dismiss is hard to win. You've got to show that there are no facts, no matter how they can be portrayed, that the SEC alleged. And so it is an issue of, you know, there are some, it's a lot of legal issues of law and not as much fact thrown in on this motion to dismiss. And the huge thing is you've got a member of Congress submitting something in support. And so that never happened before. Where, where were they when all these other cases were happening? I don't know, but you know, glad they showed up to the party. So it'll be really interesting, but again, you're not going to see, or you're probably not going to see a ruling there until October, November, maybe even December. Yeah, probably closer to December. And so it'll be, you know, another thing that we're going to really see what happens. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. And look, I'm hoping Coinbase wins to your point, but yes, I'm also concerned about the flare songbird thing. You know, they did not do a good job there. That's bad business practice when all the other exchanges were, you know, doing, you know, distributing the, the airdrops that are rightfully to the holders. So yeah, it's kind of like the enemy of my enemy, right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I grit my teeth and say, go Coinbase, beat the SEC, but that's where it stops. Sure. Final question here before I let you go. Any, I don't think we've heard anything about the Grayscale suit because, you know, obviously these Bitcoin spot ETF applications are in play. My thoughts are Gary is going to try to time the approval of like, let's say BlackRock ETF with maybe if there is a news of him losing to Grayscale and try to bury that news. Any thoughts on that and any dates that you are aware? Yeah, I think we are not going to get any decisions on the ETFs until that Grayscale case is decided. Just as a recap, that's in the DC circuit of appeals right now, oral argument was in March of 23. And if you go by when the rulings should be dropped, we're in that window of when the court would likely release its ruling, those courts or that court typically releases its opinions at 11 AM Eastern on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, you know, anybody that's really watching things, those are the times, you know, tomorrow next or this Thursday, any day, Tuesday and Thursday, we're going to get a ruling. I mean, it is coming out any day. And if the court, you know, doesn't smack the SEC on the back of the hand, then I think you're going to get a lot of delay in the ETFs. I think if the court basically, you know, comes out the way a lot of people are banking on it that, you know, Grayscale is going to win in some way, then you see the ETFs start getting approved or at least timed. You know, we've seen I forget who put it together. I wish I could give him credit, but the timeline, maybe it was Elliott Fox, but the timeline of when Gary does something or Congress does something and Gary basically one ups them every time and file something. So there's definitely going to be some political maneuvering, however, that Grayscale case comes out. But I don't think you're going to see anything until that case is decided. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I hope Grayscale wins. I hope Coinbase wins, but, you know, we'll have to wait and see. The other thing that's interesting is on those ETFs, Grayscale, the last one, I think it was the ARK 21 ETF. There's a comment period that's open. You know, people can go online and read the comments, but Grayscale submitted a comment letter saying you should, they were kind of like, you should deny this ETF only because ours was filed the first, we were the first of the first. And for you to grant any of these on basically the same reasons that we wanted one granted, but now you're going to come up with this, you know, new idea or new because Coinbase is the surveillance sharing agreement. You know, that's ridiculous. You're, actually opposing some of these ETFs again, because it's in their best interest to not have another one be granted before theirs is granted. So there's a lot of politics going back and forth. You know, I do think, well, I don't think you're going to hear anything about ETFs until the Grayscale decision. Thankfully that's happening any day now, any Tuesday or Thursday now. And if it's go, if it's good and we get a positive ruling for Grayscale, then I think within the next month or two, you'll start to see them getting approved. Hmm. Oh man. Well, I hope it's sooner than later. Obviously I'm biased there, but Fred all this great information, man. Thank you so much. All right. It was great being on here. You know what? I'm kind of awake now too. So I'm going to attack the rest of the day instead of going back and taking a nap. Awesome, man.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE HASH: Bernie Madoff's Former Attorney Reacts to Sam Bankman-Fried Being Sent to Jail; Trump's Crypto Bags
"This is the hash podcast. Stay informed with the latest on Bitcoin, ETH, the metaverse, Web3 and more. All on the hash for your ears. You're listening to the Coindesk podcast network. Hey there. Happy Monday and welcome to Coindesk TV. You are watching the hash. I am Zach Seward. We have Jen Sonasi, Will Foxley and Wendy Oh. We are going to get you up to speed on all that's going on in the world of crypto. You guys ready for this thing? Let's do it. I'm starting off the first story of the day. Friday, Sam Bankman Fried got his bail revoked and was shown to a jail cell. We are joined now by a special guest to help us unpack the latest development and its significance. Joining us is Ira Lee Sorkin. He's the former attorney for Bernie Madoff and a current partner at Mintz and Gold. Ira, how are you today? Thank you. So first of all, I just want a high level, informed perspective on this SPF thing. You've seen some major cases play out in your day. Is there anything that is especially striking or notable about the SPF case here and now? What are your high level thoughts? High level thoughts, immediate interest. Next question. All right. Let's do it. All right. Next up. Next up, immediate interest. All right. So he's in jail now. He's waiting for his October court date behind bars. You gave a similarly concise comment to CoinDesk back in December saying that Sam Bankman Fried should quote, just shut up already. Sorry, I paraphrased you, but basically it was shut up. Those were the two words of advice that you provided to Sam Bankman Fried. I don't think he took that because the judge said he was really pushing the envelope with his communications with various witnesses. Is that still the piece of advice that you would share to Sam Bankman Fried if you were his counsel now? I mean, there's no need for him once he was made bail for him to discuss the case, to share his thoughts about the case with any party other than his counsel. And quite frankly, the amount of documents, and I say this with the understanding that Vincent Gold does not represent anyone in this case. We certainly don't represent Mr. Bankman Fried. We don't represent any witnesses. We are not involved in the case, but the standard conduct that every defendant who makes bail is told, do not discuss the case. Don't discuss it with any potential witnesses. Don't discuss it certainly with the press. The only person you should talk to is your counsel. And there are ways to deal with other witnesses in the case, such as through counsel and a process called a joint defense agreement where the lawyers can talk to one another pursuant to an agreement, and it protects the attorney -client privilege, and it gives the opportunity for all counsel in the case, whether they are defendants or unindicted co -conspirators or conspirators, to be able to share information amongst the lawyers without their clients being present. So those are the general rules. There's nothing unusual about this particular case. When Sam Blankman Fried made bail, he was specifically instructed not to discuss it with anyone, discuss the case with anyone. Don't discuss it with any potential witnesses. Don't share what you are given in the way of the mandatory discovery that the government's required to give to all defendants. And, of course, we have another situation going on in Washington, D .C., and in the Southern District or the Middle District of Florida, I think it's the Southern District of Florida, where a rather prominent individual was given the same instruction by the judge. It's standard, and that's the way it's done. If you violate the bail conditions, which Mr. Blankman Fried violated according to the judge, then he faces the consequences and the consequences are jail. My understanding is that he's going to appeal it. He's got a very good lawyer representing him, and they're going to appeal it. But the chances of him getting out pending the trial, I think, are very slim. These are decisions made by the district court judge, who happens to be a judge of many years and he's very well respected, very smart. And the Court of Appeals is not going to question, I believe, his decision because he knows the record and he knows what the bail conditions are. Thanks again for joining us this morning. I wanted to ask about the significance of being able to prepare for what's coming in October while in jail. How difficult is it? How difficult is it to talk with your lawyer or with your client during that period? Is this a huge disadvantage now going into October? It is a huge disadvantage because there are, from what I've read and heard, there are innumerable documents, many, many, many, many, perhaps millions of documents that the government is required to turn over to Mr. Blankman Fried's counsel. And having had clients who are incarcerated and not being able to make bail, it is very difficult in a paper case such as this to prepare for trial. The facilities at the Metropolitan NBC Brooklyn Center, where he's being held, very, very difficult to prepare. But this is something that I have no doubt his lawyers spoke to him about and I'm just speculating and said, if you stay out, it'll be much easier to prepare for trial. If you're incarcerated, it's very difficult. The facilities are bad. There is privacy, but to load in all the documents and all the information that the government is required to turn over to his lawyers is going to make it very difficult for him to prepare. But it's done. There are a number of people who don't make bail, but it's done. It just makes it a lot more difficult to prepare. I want to talk about these diary entries. They feel like the straw that broke the camel's back here. Sam Bankman Fried's attorneys say that he wasn't trying to tamper with witnesses, that they confirmed he did leak a few pages of the diary to The New York Times. Could this come back? Could it be brought up again once this does go to trail in October? And how might it affect his case? It won't affect it at all. The fact that he disclosed information to The Times or to any media. Let's make it general media. It's not going to affect the trial at all. It affected his bail, obviously, but it's not going to affect the trial. What he turned over, we don't know. I don't know whether The Times has published it or intends to publish it, but there are First Amendment and some freedom of press issues involved in that. And I'm old enough to remember the Pentagon Papers case and Daniel Ellsberg. And that didn't stop the disclosure of information that came to the press. But it didn't affect the trial and it won't affect the trial here either. I have a question for you. Myself and a lot of other people are speculating that Sam will be given special treatment because he comes from a family with a lot of influence and money. Do you think that that is something that we will see play out that he will be segregated away from the other inmates and he will receive special treatment while incarcerated? The short answer is no. He may be segregated. Often defendants who have some notoriety are separated. But the short answer is no. I don't believe he's going to get any special treatment in jail. Jail is not a very nice place, particularly the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, which is closed, and the Brooklyn Correctional Center, which is open. And he will not be given any special privileges. And certainly the facilities do not consider the success or wealth of the family or those who put out the help.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 636:PayPal in Waters Crosshairs,CBDC Alert (UK) & SEC Appeals
"Good evening, and welcome to The Crypto Overnight. I'm Nickademus, and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific, Thursday, August 10th, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight, we delve into a massive class action lawsuit, putting VC giants in the spotlight over the FTX scandal. The SEC and Ripple take center stage as their legal dance continues. PayPal's venture into the world of stablecoins faces political scrutiny, while France takes steps to harmonize with the EU's crypto regulations. The Bank of England makes strides towards their own digital currency. And finally, we see how New York stands tall in the crypto world with impressive adoption stats. 18 prominent venture capital firms, including Temasek, Sequoia Capital, Sino Global, and SoftBank are facing a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. These firms are linked to FTX. The lawsuit, filed on August 7th, accuses these investment firms of aiding and abetting FTX's fraudulent activities. The suit alleges these VCs used their influence and resources to bolster FTX's fraudulent operations to a multi -billion dollar scale. FTX stands accused of violating various securities laws, as well as misappropriating customer funds. These VC firms are said to have painted a misleading picture of the exchange, asserting they had conducted thorough due diligence. FTX's former primary counsel, Fenwick & West LLP, is also under legal scrutiny. A class action lawsuit alleges the law firm established several shadowy entities that FTX and its top executives used to misappropriate customer funds. These entities, named North Dimension and North Wireless Dimension, are believed to have diverted misappropriated FTX customer funds. The lawsuit claims that Fenwick & West's services to FTX went beyond standard legal services. This means things like restructuring acquisitions in ways that evaded regulatory oversight and providing staff to implement strategies the law firm proposed. The lawsuit highlights the role of VC firms in potentially aiding FTX's fraudulent activities. For instance, Temasek, after an eight month long review of FTX's financials, audits, and regulatory checks, claimed to have found no issues. However, after FTX's collapse in November 2022, Temasek wrote off the entire $275 million investment in FTX. The executives responsible for the FTX investment took a substantial pay cut as well. Now here's where it gets a little weird. Temasek is a Singapore state backed investment firm. That means, by extension, the Singaporean government falls under scrutiny for potential oversight failures. I don't know that necessarily is going to go anywhere, but still. The lawsuit against Fenwick & West suggests the law firm may have played a pivotal role in FTX's alleged fraudulent activities. The suit alleges that Fenwick & West was complicit in FTX's alleged fraud by not intervening in the purported misrepresentations to its customers. Law firm is believed to have benefited financially from FTX's alleged misconduct. From questionable VCs to the courtroom, let's switch gears to the ongoing legal dance between the SEC and Ripple Labs. It seems the courtroom drama never ends for these two.
77WABC Radio
"district court" Discussed on 77WABC Radio
"Police officers weren't killed. Now look, if you attack a police officer and so forth, you're going to be prosecuted and charged, but so far they've prosecuted or have jailed or whatever they're doing, almost a thousand people, truly. A thousand people weren't in their trash and cops. No, in fact, the data from the Justice Department bears that out about 10% of the total number of criminal descendants are charged with the checking police officers with some sort of weapon. The overwhelming majority of charges are low level misdemeanors like parading in the capital. But Mark, I'll tell you something even more alarming, Matthew graves, the GC U.S. attorney who we've talked about. He told The Washington Post that figure would double, but they believe the total case load will reach 2000 defendants. Now Mark, when was the last time you heard a federal government prosecutor put a quota on an investigation and prosecution? But I'll tell you today there was some interesting developments yesterday and today in the Proud Boys trial, they actually have very good defense attorneys. And they caught an FBI agent lying on the stand, concealing evidence, doctoring evidence, and in one communication being told by FBI boss to destroy over 300 pieces of evidence in a case. They're not sure if it's this case or another case. So these are sort of the revelations that can come out in a trial when defendants are properly defended by their counsel. So, and this is what I read that you wrote about to or talked about. And that is that we have an FBI agent here who doctored evidence for the trial in order to get this guy convicted. Correct? Yes. So this is part of an FBI chat room or chat application. Called links where the FBI agents talk about cases investigations, et cetera. And they try to hide of the thousands of messages under the jenks rule as you know, turning over any sort of communications that relate to the specific case. While someone on the defense team found these hidden messages and it is a trove of exculpatory evidence for the defendants and incriminating evidence for the FBI. One agent told another agent to remove the agent's name from a confidential human source report. Now, Mark, we know at least probably a dozen 15 FBI informants were run into the Proud Boys months for January 6th, so they wanted doctor the evidence of that. And more egregiously, you have at the FBI spying on privileged communications between attorney, an attorney and their descendant, their client. Reading the emails and then warning it looks like the chief prosecutor that this particular defendant planned to go to trial. I mean, and you have the judge judge Tim Kelly, who is sitting there in that courtroom, seeing all of this develop and running interference for the government time and time again. It's so just enraging, but the truth is coming out. And he's a Trump judge, right? He sure is. Yep. I want people to understand how district court judges are chosen. You heard me say Trump judge, it may not be a Trump judge at all. He nominated him, but a lot of deals are made at the district court level, not typically the appellate court never the Supreme Court. In order to get through two of our nominees through the judiciary committee in the Senate, a president might agree to one of theirs, Reagan did it every president has done a Trump has done it. So we don't really know if this guy's quote unquote a Trump judge, even though he was nominated by Trump if you know what I mean. And I'll tell everybody one other thing. These district court judges, they have lunch together. They said the conference room, they bring their lunch in, whether they get at a cafe chair, they bring it. They become socially friendly, they become bodies, and this is also part of the problem, isn't it Julie? Agui went better with judge Kim Kelly not only did he once work in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office with very same office that's prosecuting every case. His wife is a top official for D.C. mayor muriel Bowser. There you go. That's how insect Jewish at Washington D.C. is and why none of these trials should take place in the nation's capital. This is one of the things I've been thinking about about telling the House Republicans and at least start the process. That the idea that Washington D.C. that goes 95% Democrat every presidential election. That that jury of your peers for Republican or Trump supporter, whoever you are, it's not a jury of your peers. It's impossible to be a jury of your peers, given the ideological differences. And given the hate that's developed in the city for say a Trump or whatever. And so it's very difficult if not impossible to get a fair trial. And so something needs to be done about this. There needs to be a new judiciary act. I've actually been thinking about this because the jurisdiction needs to be removed. I don't even talk about the venue. The entire jurisdiction for that district needs to be removed. And sort of spread around to different parts of the country. Because this is ridiculous. And you're a 100% correct. This guy, Kelly, from what you just told me then about his wife, then I know for sure. That was a deal made to put him in there because the Trump people wouldn't typically put somebody like that in there. I can't imagine. Any final comments, Jolie? Just thank you for covering this. You can tell that the truth is coming out that the January 6th narrative is completely unraveling by the utter panic and hysteria in the media congressional Democrats and of course our rhino Republican senators from Mitch McConnell to Mitt Romney down to Lindsey Graham who also expects outreach that Tucker had access to this video. It's unbelievable to me that they put up with this January 6th committee the stalinist organized effort by Nancy Pelosi, and it goes on and on in the American people, the information was censored from us. And now we know members didn't even look at the videos that the staff did.
The Ben Shapiro Show
"district court" Discussed on The Ben Shapiro Show
"And so because we would not cooperate with them, they were not able to effectuate that policy, which would have been detrimental to probably tens of thousands of people. Think about it. You're trying to fire nurses at a time when there's an acute shortage of healthcare workers. Give me a break. So I think that there are ways that you can be strategic to try to stymie the federal overreach. For example, we brought lawsuits on the immigration on the catch and release. And so this is pending in front of the federal district court in the Panhandle. The case is submitted. We think the judge is definitely going to rule for us based on what happened at the trial. So it very well may be that the judge rules on a nationwide basis that Biden's catch and release policy violates the law. And that he can't just be releasing people in our country by the hundreds of thousands. That's going to make some big changes. So you got to figure out ways that you can fight back. But one of the things that we're proud of is Biden does this stimulus money, right? I didn't need any of it. He gives it to me and basically whatever we use it on with projects, it was just counting for the inflation that had happened because by printing the money, you cause inflation, so you spend the money on a project that's now 50% more expensive than it was three years ago. So it didn't really move the ball forward, but I think the more independent we are, the better because what they like to do is they like to use the purse strings and hold that over a state, try to coerce your behavior and say they're going to take away some of the largess if you don't do what they say you should do. Well folks, that is governor Ron DeSantis, the best governed America, make sure you pick up a copy of the courage to be free to out right now. Number one in Amazon and keep it there. The Santa's book dot com. Thanks so much for your support. God bless.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"This is Bloomberg law with June brusso from Bloomberg radio. The Supreme Court has thrown out a case that was being closely watched by in-house counsel about the scope of the attorney client privilege, saying they shouldn't have taken it up in the first place. The case involved grand jury subpoenas issued to an unnamed company and its law firm and communications over international tax issues and the ownership of cryptocurrency. The law firm had handed over 20,000 pages, but withheld about 50 others, and the plaintiff had asked for a broader test arguing that it's hard to disentangle business purposes from legal purposes. But during the oral arguments, many of the justices suggested there was no need to change the scope of the attorney client privilege, or to intervene at all. Here's justice Amy Coney Barrett. We can't really say ty goes to the runner, right? When the burden is on, the person invoking the privilege, we can't get into this whole put a percentage on it for the reasons that we've already talked about. So maybe it's best to say nothing. And so the justices said almost nothing, issuing just one line, saying, the writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted. That means it's as if the case was never briefed and argued. I've been talking to MC son gala a partner that complex appellate litigation group. So MC before the break, you were talking about how this is now going to be handled by district court judges and how they might handle the test. A lot of the discretion in how you're applying this test remains with the trial judges remains with the district court. And they also have, you know, if they're supposed to have been spoken or even if it has, it's possible that the court that's adopted the primary purpose test could say, yes, but applying it to these circumstances, I think it should be applied in this way, which may be more of a significant purpose test. So it may be that by doing a dig in allowing the court to work it out themselves, work at level in the district court level that we might sort of reach that consensus that justice cabinet thoughts that are really, I think you're saying two different things, but in practice, you really end up applying a similar test. So the question would be in the 9th work it is not true because obviously there was a significant difference to the outcome of this case, depending on how the test was applied in the test is applied pretty strictly both by the district court and then you clerk it. So it really depends on which book that you're in about how they, you know, how they take what the Supreme Court said. Yeah, and justice Gorsuch also said the tests sounded a lot alike, but you don't think the tests are a lot alike. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly different on their face. And I think that depending on who is applying them, maybe they merge in some cases, but why have two tests, then I guess I'll just be super practical, right? Why have a primary purpose in a sort of significance or substantial purpose test? Why make that distinction if it really means nothing? Ultimately. So I think the courts think there's some difference there. It's just that I think we're just of course which in Kavanaugh were saying was they may have announced two different standards, but at least in a few cases and in certain contexts, as they end up applying it, some of the courts seem uncomfortable with a primary purpose standard and end up simply applying it as a significant purpose. So basically it's all left for the courts to work out on their own. At this point with the various input from the justices that are about where they might go with it. Do you think that this will lead businesses to engage in more siloed communications or to get more advice from outside counsel? Yeah, I mean, I think that both of those things were possible, certainly that was the advice that was the advice given prior to for petition being granted was, hey, to minimize uncertainty and risk, but that's them to do is to really carve out your pure legal advice and your business advice and to communication. So we don't have to get into those point of applying this test and being subject to the discussion of a particular child judge. So sure, I'm sure that continues because that was the advice that was put forth before the traditional experience. So you submitted an amicus brief on behalf of one of the organizations and there were several organizations that submitted amicus brief. Are people very disappointed in this? Yeah, I mean, I think that the issue is one that really at the forefront or companies and their in-house counsel in particular. And so it's kind of a situation where you might deal with this uncertainty, but then you have a hope that that certainty will come, right? We'll have clear guidance and the woman to do and then your hope will come to dash. You're like, okay, not now. We're going to have to wait for that. So there is a certain level of disappointment in let down. After the argument. But I also think that the argument was sort of maybe a little disappointing and fairy in itself to those who do all of the economics and all of Intel's votes who were focused on having the substantial and not the primary standard Visa test. There was a little too many voices in the court that suggested that they might not be looking at the practical aspects that the practicing lawyers and virus associations and in-house counsel would be looking at. So as I disappointment immediately, but also I think honestly a little bit of relief that we're not going in a strong direction towards a really, really tough talk. Thanks so much for being on the show MC. That's emcees and gala a partner that complex appellate litigation group. And in other legal news today today, the Department of Justice joined by 8 states filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in the United States District Court for the eastern district of Virginia against Google. Attorney general Merrick Garland announced the lawsuit, saying Google has weakened, if not destroyed, competition in the ad tech industry. As detailed in our complaint, we allege that Google's anti competitive conduct extends to three significant elements
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Owned by the French government, but going back to when the French government asked go on to make the alliance irreversible, it meant, you know, cement the relationship, right? Make it long term. Now people within Nissan saw this as a merger play. So they thought that the companies would be irreversibly combined. What we learned afterwards was that ghosn was essentially trying to set up a holding company structure so to create sort of a super car company under a single holding company, which would actually return some independence to Nissan. It was an early 2018 when a small group of executives within Nissan got alarmed over this. And around the same time, basically an auditor within Nissan started to question some of the financial dealings that go and had. It actually had to do with plane tickets for his family. And as they dug deeper, they started to wonder whether there was any wrongdoing going on here. And they hadn't uncovered a whole lot, but one of the things that they did was they ended up getting in contact with prosecutors from the Tokyo district court, and the prosecutors saw a bit of an opportunity here. They saw that potentially they had a big sort of target that they could go after when November 2018 rolled around, basically there was a plan in place. Ghosn would be flown to Tokyo and we learned later on as the case developed that essentially these charges were used to access even more information that was held by ghosn. For example, at one of his offices in Beirut, the department that he had in Brazil, and so in 2019, early 2019, you saw a new set of charges more serious, levied against ghosn, Brian so Japanese authorities are moving in ongoing and he starts thinking about what his next move should be. That's right. He's now part of he's a participant in the Japanese legal system, and for people who aren't familiar with it, it's not club med. It is a really tough situation that goes in. He's facing round the clock interrogations, long periods of incarceration where he can barely even talk to, you know, his wife, let alone his lawyers, a lot of pressure, techniques from Japanese prosecutors trying to get him to plead guilty. I mean, once you enter the Japanese legal system at this point, there is something like a 99.9% conviction rate. I mean, it's really game over when it's kind of reached this point. So the guy is desperate, goes options are nil, right? He's in a really tough spot, and behind the scenes, the outlines of a plot to get going out of Japan
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"The 11th circuit addressing a similar question held that they're really more like newspapers that they do exercise editorial control over the information, not just in terms of censoring certain speech, but also in terms of how they present the speech, how they arrange the speech. So if you have a Twitter feed or a Facebook feed, you know that they tend to try and show you things. So with the 5th circuit saying, one thing in the 11 circuit saying another, is it likely the Supreme Court will take the case. The laws were not exactly the same, but they presented some similar issues and they reach a different conclusion about those issues. And that's the type of case that the Supreme Court often decides to hear. Explain how this case went before the Supreme Court before and what that might indicate. So once the district court had issued his ruling in Texas instead, this law violates the free speech clause. So I'm going to stay it. I'm going to say it does not go into effect yet. The 5th circuit removes the state before it made any kind of decision and said, yes, this law should go into effect. And when that was appealed to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was like, no, no, no, actually, we think that the district court should stay in effect. So how do you read the Supreme Court's willingness to say maybe we should hold off on having this law go into effect? I'm not entirely sure it may mean that there are 5 votes for finding it unconstitutional. I will note, however, that there was a dissent of three justices who indicated that they thought the law might actually be constitutional. How do you think this law might affect social media platforms? So basically, anyone who thinks that their post was removed because of viewpoint discrimination would have a right to sue. And there were also disclosure requirements. So again, the fear of being sued based on decisions about what it takes down may very well affect how these companies decide what gets posted or what doesn't get posted. Given how much criticism they've come under for not removing enough content, now they're coming under criticism for removing too much content. It'll be really interesting to see whether the Supreme Court wants to wade into this this term when it has so many controversial cases on its docket already. Thanks so much Caroline. That's Caroline mala Corbin, a professor at the university of Miami law school. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg law show. Remember, you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg law podcast. You can find them on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and at WWW dot Bloomberg dot com slash podcast slash law. And remember to tune into the Bloomberg law show every weeknight at 10 p.m. Wall Street time. I'm June Grasso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Burden LLP accountants and advisers presents tax chat with Lisa Goldman, partner and leader of burden's international tax and advisory practice. An NFT or non fungible token is a certificate then entitles the holder to certain rights associated with a digital asset. These assets come attack implications that will likely be governed by general tax principles
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Court first day hadn't shown any harm that had resulted by vint of that district court. And so as justice kavian pointed out to her dissent in that case of his called Louisiana versus American rivers, if the court is going to use the shadow docket in cases that just aren't emergencies like that case, then the shadow dock is not for emergencies at all. And all that's really happening is that these are similarly disguised and even more thinly recent. Narrative decisions and NASA imply that there are folks like me who have become so much more publicly critical of what the courts do in this context. Yeah, that caught my eye undoing an EPA rule on water quality standards. How did they even justify or they don't have to justify guests taking that on emergency basis, it seems outlandish. And this is exactly where we are. I mean, I think that case is such a perfect crystallization where the hard to see what the emergency was, given that it had been 5 months since the district court had ruled, even if right the court was sympathetic to Louisiana's claims on the merits, the district court had misread the clean water act or misapplied relevant precedents about administrative law. Why not just put that on the merits docket? And deal with it in due course. And what's so striking about that decision June is you ask why did they do it? Well, we don't know. Because there was no majority opinion. There was no concurrent opinion. We know it was 5 to four, only because four justices publicly joined in the dissent and not just the three democratic appointees, chief justice John Roberts, joined justice Kagan's dissenting opinion, which called out the majority for in justice. Words of using the shadow docket. So I think what we're seeing is more and more public awareness of a trend that really started in 2017. And the clean water act case is especially as a gallon because the decision came just two days after justice Barrett gave this speech at the Ronald Reagan presidential library where she says, you know, if you really think we're politicians in robes and not judges, read our opinion. Read the opinion and see for yourself if there are legal principles driving our decision making, while two days later, she is the decisive vote in the clean water act case in which there was no opinion to read. And in some of these cases, you have lower courts having trials on these issues, and then the Supreme Court comes along and says, no, we're reversing that. Without oral argument without any explanation, it's troubling as far as the rule of law. The key is that, I think there are a lot of folks out there who that all that matters at the bottom line. And so if I save the bottom line is okay, then I don't care about how the court copied it. But the process matters here. There's a more recent Louisiana case about redistricting that I think is really instructive here. So Louisiana, like a number of states, redrawing its congressional district after and in light of the 2020 census, a district court after an extensive hearing right 152 page decision that carefully sets out why he believed Louisiana's maps violated the Voting Rights Act. Why he believed Louisiana was required to draw at least one more so called majority minority district to avoid violating section two of the Voting Rights Act and it is a full bore full sort of analysis. Louisiana
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"The page at me in the district court judge's decision and was probably working on the minds of the appellate court judges even though they didn't expressly articulated that way Tell us more about the 9th circuit's reasons for unanimously telling the judge you can't dismiss this lawsuit at this stage So the decision on appeal largely focused on procedural elements And these procedural elements have been a bugaboo in the 9th circuit in copyright cases for over a decade now What is that issue with substantial similarity And for substantial similarity we apply a two part test known as extrinsic test and the intrinsic test But on a motion to dismiss all we consider is the extrinsic test and the extrinsic test asks whether there are similarities Remember similarities not differences where there are similarities between plot themes dialog mood setting characters and sequence of events that are considered protectable elements under copyright law The first thing the district court judge has to do is decide what's protectable and what's not protectable elements So the general idea of a grieving mother is not protectable under copyright law The idea of a stall being given humanistic features being treated like a human is not copyrightable The fact that you focused on inducing a boyfriend to go steal a bottle of wine that may well be copyrightable What did not happen here at the Discord level was the judge never attempted to separate the wheat from the chaff to figure out what were the copyrightable elements and what were the non copyrightable elements And then say well these copyrightable elements do have some similarities such that reasonable juror might believe there was copyright frigid That's what the district court did not do in which the 9th circuit really wants to be done on a motion to dismiss The 9th circuit said dismissal of the lawsuit at this early stage was improper because quote reasonable minds could differ on whether the stories are substantially similar My question is don't reasonable minds always differ on whether these things are similar I mean it seems like it's very subjective You're absolutely right June And that's why the 9th circuit that followed those comments with a suggestion that it would be more appropriate here to allow experts to weigh in on this matter And this has become increasingly common in the 9th circuit We see experts being used more and more in copyright cases and I would say there's a definite trend in the 9th circuit to almost requiring some sort of expert input before summary judgment or motion is granted The plot will continue back at the district court Thanks Terry That's Terrence Ross of cat and mutant rosenman Coming up will the Supreme Court limit the EPA's power to tackle climate change This is Bloomberg The you could save big when you bundle your home and auto with progressive but when we just come out and say it it feels like it falls a bit flat So we're going to use humor But we don't really want social intelligence so nothing too goofy and we need to avoid any polarizing topics Oh and it has to be about.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Soccer I mean there's also the court of public opinion that U.S. soccer is always considering I think Ben a tough time for that organization not just because of the equal pay lawsuit but because of some of the allegations of coach abuse which have come to the fore more recently that U.S. soccer is dealing with And so you know the players I think we're always open to a fair and reasonable settlement of the lawsuits so that they could move together jointly move forward together with U.S. soccer and really turn the page on this bad chapter of unequal pay And so there came to a point where U.S. soccer was willing to pay the back pay to acknowledge the past on equal pay and to make a commitment to equal pay going forward and that put in place the conditions needed to resolve the lawsuit So let's talk about the settlement We've heard the big number 24 million What exactly does the settlement entail So there are two key components to the settlement and then there's a very important contingency The first component of the settlement is looking backwards for the members of the two classes that they would get paid for the past pay discrimination by U.S. soccer And that's what the 24 million is intended to do through 22 million in direct payments for the class members and a $2 million fund And that the class members can use And then the second part of the settlement is the looking forward part which is that U.S. soccer has to pay the men and the women equally for all tournaments and games in the future including for the World Cup And then the important contingency on the settlement is that the settlement will come into effect assuming it is approved by the district court when the collective bargaining agreement is ratified So there are collective bargaining agreement negotiations happening now They've been happening for a while and an agreement is important that the players have basically an agreement that governs their pay going forward How much does this end gender discrimination in soccer Well I think it's an incredibly important first step When you look at it in perspective the U.S. home national team was formed in 1985 and the players had never been paid equally since then And this is the first time that these players brought the EEOC complaints and then filed a lawsuit and really got U.S. soccer to do something about it right That pay will be equal for the U.S. women's national team and the men's national team going forward And so we think it's an important precedent Obviously for the players on the national team but potentially for other national teams potentially for other sports et cetera The FIFA money gap remains are the players planning to do anything about that I think the hope is that the players and U.S. soccer will be working together to get FIFA to make some changes there And I know some of the players had a press conference where they talked about how important it is to get some change from FIFA Thanks for being on the show That's Nicole sahar ski of mayor Brown Coming up next the Supreme Court is wading back into the culture wars over gay rights This is Bloomberg He was the heart of drivers who switch and save with progressive save over $700 on average and those savings add up Imagine what you could buy.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Soccer I mean there's also the court of public opinion that U.S. soccer is always considering I think Ben a tough time for that organization not just because of the equal pay lawsuit but because of some of the allegations of coach reviews which have come to the fore more recently that U.S. soccer is dealing with And so you know the players I think we're always open to a fair and reasonable settlement of the lawsuits so that they could move together jointly move forward together with U.S. soccer and really turn the page on this bad chapter of unequal pay And so there came to a point where U.S. soccer was willing to pay the back pay to acknowledge the past on equal pay and to make a commitment to equal pay going forward and that put in place the conditions needed to resolve the lawsuit So let's talk about the settlement We've heard the big number 24 million What exactly does the settlement entail So there are two key components to the settlement and then there's a very important contingency The first component of the settlement is looking backwards for the members of the two classes that they would get paid for the past pay discrimination by U.S. soccer And that's what the 24 million is intended to do through 22 million in direct payments to the class members and a $2 million fund And that the class members can use And then the second part of the settlement is the looking forward part which is that U.S. soccer has to pay the men and the women equally for all tournaments and games in the future including for the World Cup And then the important contingency on the settlement is that the settlement will come into effect assuming it is approved by the district court when the collective bargaining agreement is ratified So there are collective bargaining agreement negotiations happening now They've been happening for a while And an agreement is important that the players have basically an agreement that governs their pay going forward How much does this end gender discrimination in soccer Well I think it's an incredibly important first step When you look at it in perspective the U.S. home national team was formed in 1985 and the players had never been paid equally since then And this is the first time that these players brought the EEOC complaints and then filed a lawsuit and really got U.S. soccer to do something about it right That they will be equal for the U.S. women's national team and the men's national team going forward And so we think it's an important precedent Obviously for the players on the national team but potentially for other national teams potentially for other sports et cetera The FIFA money gap remains are the players planning to do anything about that I think the hope is that the players and U.S. soccer will be working together to get FIFA to make some changes there And I know some of the players had a press conference where they talked about how important it is to get some change from FIFA Thanks for being on the show That's Nicole sahar ski of mayor Brown Coming up next the Supreme Court is wading back into the culture wars over gay rights This.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Soccer I mean there's also the court of public opinion that U.S. soccer is always considering I think Ben a tough time for that organization not just because of the equal pay lawsuit but because of some of the allegations of coach reviews which have come to the fore more recently that U.S. soccer is dealing with And so you know the players I think we're always open to a fair and reasonable settlement of the lawsuits so that they could move together jointly move forward together with U.S. soccer and really turn the page on this bad chapter of unequal pay And so there came to a point where U.S. soccer was willing to pay the back pay to acknowledge the past on equal pay and to make a commitment to equal pay going forward and that put in place the conditions needed to resolve the lawsuit So let's talk about the settlement We've heard the big number 24 million What exactly does the settlement entail So there are two key components to the settlement and then there's a very important contingency The first component of this settlement is looking backwards for the members of the two classes that they would get paid for the past pay discrimination by U.S. soccer And that's what the 24 million is intended to do through 22 million in direct payments for the class members and a $2 million fund And that the class members can use And then the second part of the settlement is the looking forward part which is that U.S. soccer has to pay the men and the women equally for all tournaments and games in the future including for the World Cup And then the important contingency on the settlement is that the settlement will come into effect assuming it is approved by the district court when the collective bargaining agreement is ratified So there are collective bargaining agreement negotiations happening now They've been happening for a while and an agreement is important that the players have basically an agreement that governs their pay going forward How much does this end gender discrimination in soccer Well I think it's an incredibly important first step When you look at it in perspective the U.S. home national team was formed in 1985 and the players had never been paid equally since then And this is the first time that these players brought the EEOC complaints and then filed a lawsuit and really got U.S. soccer to do something about it right That they will be equal for the U.S. women's national team and the men's national team going forward And so we think it's an important precedent Obviously for the players on the national team but potentially for other national teams potentially for other sports et cetera The FIFA money gap remains are the players planning to do anything about that I think the hope is that the players and U.S. soccer will be working together to get FIFA to make some changes there And I know some of the players had a press conference where they talked about how important it is to get some change from FIFA Thanks for being on the show That's Nicole sahar ski of mayor Brown Coming up next the Supreme Court is wading back into the culture wars over gay rights This is Bloomberg And sure we have 30 seconds to tell you the drivers who switch to progressive could save big But then what Well we could try to fill the remaining time with awkward pauses It's often done for comedic effect Is it working I can't tell if this is funny Maybe this is so bad it's funny Wow we really peaked at the safe big when you switch to progressive parts Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates JIT New Jersey institute of technology makes innovation happen The university helped biomedical engineering professor Tara Alvarez launch a startup that may revolutionize vision therapy Our startup through NG IT is called ocular motor technology We create virtual reality vision therapy in a head mounted display So it's gaming and basically sugarcoating the therapy so that children and young adolescents don't even realize they're doing therapy To accomplish this we need biomedical engineers which are here in on GIT campus computer scientists artists people that are into story development and then we are collaborating with a lot of the large pediatric medical centers This idea of a startup culture is extremely important to not just NG IT and the national science foundation but also to the U.S. as a societal whole And JIT New Jersey institute of technology learn more at nj IT dot EDU One 45 over 92 One 80 over one 11 A 182 over a hundred And I had a heart attack and a cardiac arrest And then a stroke Your blood pressure numbers could change your life A lot of people don't understand including myself I didn't now I do The impact of having a show My memory is shot.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Me is intellectual property litigator Terrence Ross a partner cat and rosenman So Terry tell us a little about the lawsuit So this lawsuit is about Taylor Swift's monster song shake it off which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and remained there for 50 weeks almost an entire year and has sold more than 9 million copies So it's a monster hit recording and the plaintiff song which also did quite well quite frankly called play as was on the Billboard Hot 100 never reached number one but was on it for a while and got some play time quite frankly And writers of the play as song have alleged that their chorus is so substantially similar to the chorus and Taylor Swift's shake it off that there has been copyright infringement It seems like those phrases that they're talking about are just common phrases It doesn't seem like there's anything original about them Well that was the original argument that Taylor Swift made when she was first sued She filed a motion to dismiss the district court which is the trial court in the federal court system And she argued that these were common phrases that were not copyrightable They were not entitled to protection And the district court judge agreed and dismissed the lawsuit And the plaintiffs took them up to the 9th circuit and the 9th circuit reversed and said essentially that the lower court was focused too much on comparing the words as words and failed to consider that the arrangement of the words in the chorus across the course were sufficient to be copyrightable No judgment on whether or not there was infringement the 9th circuit simply said there is copyright protection here and therefore the case was sent back to the district court in California for further proceedings And that's where we are now with this new decision by the district court Swift's defense gets a little nuanced for the non musical Tell us what her defense is here So when the case got back to the district court the defendants and Taylor Swift and her musical companies filed what's known as a motion for summary judgment which says based on all the facts of record there is no legal claim here No reasonable jury would ever find for the plaintiff and therefore we shouldn't have a trial And the court rejected that motion denied it So there will be a trial But what was fundamentally at issue And keep in mind this case is not about the music This is exclusively about the lyrics of the two songs And that makes it different from a lot of the cases we've talked about before like blurred lines and Ed Sheeran songs It's only about the lyrics here And what Taylor Swift said was that there simply is not a substantial similarity between the two songs with respect to the copyrighted elements The mere fact that they both mentioned players going to play and the haters going to hate doesn't mean that she copied in an inappropriate manner that constituted infringement So the same judge who dismissed the lawsuit in 2018 is now allowing the lawsuit to go forward Well he was ordered to allow the lawsuit to go forward by the 9th circuit The way copyright law works is that there's a two part test that is applied to determine whether or not there is infringement First part is called the extrinsic test That's performed by the judge And then the second part is called the intrinsic test which is performed by the jury And under the part that's performed by the judge the extrinsic test you look at external factors that are considered objective factors to determine at an analytical level whether or not there's a case of substantial similarity and expert opinions from musicologists come in at this point very heavily And that's a decision that's left to the judge And the determination he has to make is whether or not in looking at these external factors there is efficient belief that no reasonable jury could find Infringement And if he agrees with that then he can cut off the case not let it go the jury But if he has any doubts he has to allow the case to go on to part two which is the subjective or intrinsic test which has to be performed by a jury that trial in which they look at the totality of the two works and make a subjective judgment as to substantial similarity The judge was really sort of stuck here because there is some similarity between the words and the way the words are arranged You really felt I think he was correct that he had to let this pass on to the jury and see what they thought about the total feeling of whether or not there was a substantial similarity Although he mentioned that he thought Taylor Swift defense was a pretty good defense and might fare well with the jury So now let's go to his opinion where he talks about the factors to be considered He said the 9th circuit has acknowledged that it has never announced a uniform set of factors for analyzing a musical composition under the extrinsic task and that it did not intend to change that precedent although it recognizes the difficulties faced by the district court so the 9th circuit basically says yes this test is confusing but we're not going to help you out Yes and this is the problem that district judges have with copyright cases The courts of appeal have said you have a role to play as a gatekeeper as to whether or not these cases go to trial and get decided by a jury But we're not going to give you a list of factors to consider And you references a very famous 9th circuit case that involves Mariah Carey's song thank God I found you Which also involved alleged similarities in the chorus of two songs And in that case as the judges accurately quoted the nicer just came right out and said look we can't come up with a list of standards for the district courts to consider There's no checklist You just have to consider anything that seems relevant to you And that's a very ambiguous thing to tell the judge who actually has to on a day to today basis Administer justice in the copyright ground And since it's unfair although I get what the nicer setting is it's hard to come up with a comprehensive list In other areas of copyright law that hasn't stopped us from coming up please with partial list fair use has four factors that mandatory must be considered coordinates Supreme Court but you can bring in other factors that may be relevant I struggle to understand why we can't do that with respect to this substantial similarity test at least with respect to the extrinsic prong of the past So as to help out district court judges What's the biggest obstacle for the plaintiffs at trial The problem I think the.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Songs Joining me is intellectual property litigator Terrence Ross a partner cat and rosenman So Terry tell us a little about the lawsuit So this lawsuit is about Taylor Swift's monster song shake it off which debuted at number one on the billboard 100 chart and remained there for 50 weeks almost an entire year and has sold more than 9 million copies So it's a monster hit recording And the plaintiff saw which also did quite well quite frankly called play as was on the Billboard Hot 100 never reached number one but was on it for a while and got some play time quite frankly And writers of the play as song have alleged that their chorus is so substantially similar to the chorus in Taylor Swift's shake it off that there had to have been copyright infringement It seems like those phrases that they're talking about are just common phrases It doesn't seem like there's anything original about them Well that was the original argument that Taylor Swift made when she was first sued She filed a motion to dismiss the district court which is the trial court in the federal court system And she argued that these were common phrases that were not copyrightable They were not entitled to protection And the district court judge agreed and dismissed the lawsuit and the plaintiffs took them up to the 9th circuit and the 9th circuit reversed And said essentially that the lower court was focused too much on comparing the words as words and failed to consider that the arrangement of the words in the chorus across the course were sufficient to be copyrightable No judgment on whether or not there was infringement the 9th circuit simply said there is copyright protection here and therefore the case was sent back to the district court in California for further proceedings And that's where we are now with this new decision by the district court Swift's defense gets a little nuanced for the non musical Tell us what her defense is here So when the case got back to the district court the defendants and Taylor Swift and her musical companies filed what's known as a motion for summary judgment which says based on all the facts of record there is no legal claim here no reasonable jury whatever fine for the plaintiff and therefore we shouldn't have a trial And the court rejected that motion denied it So there will be a trial But what was fundamentally at issue And keep in mind this case is not about the music This is exclusively about the lyrics of the two songs And that makes it different from a lot of the cases we've talked about before like blurred lines and Ed Sheeran songs It's only about the lyrics here And what Taylor Swift said was that there simply is not a substantial similarity between the two songs with respect to the copyrighted elements the mere fact that they both mentioned players going to play and haters going to hate doesn't mean that she copied in an inappropriate manner that constituted infringement So the same judge who dismissed the lawsuit in 2018 is now allowing the lawsuit to go forward Well he was ordered to allow the lawsuit to go forward by the 9th circuit The way copyright law works is that there's a two part test that is applied to determine whether or not there is infringement First part is called the extrinsic test That's performed by the judge And then the second part is called the intrinsic test which is performed by the jury And under the part that's performed by the judge the extrinsic test you look at external factors that are considered objective factors to determine at an analytical level whether or not there's a case of substantial similarity and expert opinions for musicologists come in at this point very heavily And that's a decision that's left to the judge and the determination he has to make is whether or not in looking at these external factors there is sufficient belief that no reasonable jury could find Infringement And if he agrees with that then he can cut off the case not let it go to jury But if he has any doubts he has to allow the case to go on to part two which is the subjective or intrinsic test which has to be performed by a jury fan trial in which they look at the totality of the two works and make a subjective judgment as to substantial similarity But judge was really sort of stuck here because there is some similarity between the words and the way the words are arranged You really felt I think he was correct that he had to let this pass on to the jury and see what they thought about the total feeling of whether or not there was a substantial similarity Although he mentioned that he thought Taylor Swift defense was a pretty good defense and might fare well with the jury So now let's go to his opinion where he talks about the factors to be considered He said the 9th circuit has acknowledged that it has never announced a uniform set of factors for analyzing a musical composition under the extrinsic test and that it did not intend to change that precedent although it recognizes the difficulties faced by the district court so the 9th circuit basically says yes this test is confusing but we're not going to help you out Yes And this is the problem that district judges have with copyright cases The courts of appeal have said you have a role to play as a gatekeeper as to whether or not these cases go to trial and get decided by a jury But we're not going to give you a list of factors to consider And he referenced a very famous 9th circuit case that involved Mariah Carey's song thank God I found you Which also involved alleged similarities in the chorus of two songs And in that case as the judge is accurately quoted the 9th circuit just came right out and said look we can't come up with a list of standards for the district courts to consider There's no checklist You just have to consider anything that seems relevant to you And that's a very ambiguous thing to tell the judge who actually has to on a day to today basis Administer justice in the copyright ground And to 30 it's unfair although I get what the nicer setting is it's hard to come up with a comprehensive list In other areas of copyright law that hasn't stopped us from coming up please with partial list fair use has four factors that mandatory must be considered coordinate Supreme Court But you can bring in other factors that may be relevant I struggle to understand why we can't do that with respect to this substantial similarity test at least with respect to the extrinsic prong of the past So as to help out district court judges What's the biggest obstacle for the plaintiffs at trial The problem I think the plaintiffs actually face here is Taylor Swift being the defendant Taylor Swift is not just any recording artist Taylor Swift is iconic Take one of my daughters Caroline For example she just loves Bailey's wife and could never believe that Taylor Swift copied everybody else's work because she is so awesome Now are you going to get a jury pool that has many people that feel that exact same way And the plaintiff will have no chance to convince them And yes they will get the opportunity to vlog dear them and ask them questions to try to sort out people who may be prejudiced But the reality is a lot of juries particularly Taylor Swift fans would die to serve on this jury and actually get to see Taylor Swift up close and personal testifying And so there could be working real hard to get onto the jury even if they're not being completely forthright during voir deer And those jurors are going to be.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Cat and rosenman about the lawsuit that claims Taylor Swift stole some of the phrases in her hit song shake it off Judge Michael Fitzgerald said that she presented expert testimony he said her experts do make some persuasive arguments but a trial should decide whether the two songs shared substantial similarities and not musicologists Why not use ecologists aren't they the experts in this area Why leave it to jurors who are not Because there's really two considerations here as to whether or not infringement of a copyright occurred and the first is whether or not there is a plausible argument that the two works at issue bear some similarity each other And if you find that there is then you have to look at other factors and it's up to then the jury you got pass it on to the jury So the judge was really sort of stuck here because there is some similarity between the words and the way the words are arranged You really felt I think he was correct that he had to let this pass on to the jury and see what they thought about the total feeling of whether or not there was a substantial similarity So now let's go to his opinion where he talks about the factors to be considered He said the 9th circuit has acknowledged that it has never announced a uniform set of factors for analyzing a musical composition under the extrinsic test and that it did not intend to change that precedent although it recognizes the difficulties faced by the district court in applying the extrinsic test to musical compositions The analysis must remain as is because music is not capable of classification into only 5 or 6 constituent elements So the 9th circuit says yes this test is really confusing but we're not going to help you out anymore So this is the problem that district judges have with copyright cases The courts of appeal have said you have a role to play as a gatekeeper as to whether or not these cases go to trial and get decided by a jury But we're not going to give you a list of factors to consider And he referenced a very famous 9th circuit case that involves Mariah Carey's song thank God I found you Which also involved alleged similarities in the chorus of two songs And in that case as the judges accurately quoted the nicer just came right out and said look we can't come up with a list of standards for the district courts to consider There's no checklist You just have to consider anything that seems relevant to you And that's a very ambiguous thing to tell the judge who actually has to on a day to today basis Administer justice in the copyright ground and to 30% is unfair although I get what the nicer setting is it's hard to come up with a comprehensive list in other areas of copyright law that hasn't stopped us from coming up please with partial list fair use has four factors that have to be considered Mandatory must be considered Supreme Court But you can bring in other factors that may be relevant I struggle to understand why we can't do that with respect to this substantial similarity test at least with respect to the extrinsic prong of the past So as to help out district court judges Here's the reaction of the plaintiff's attorney they told he told whoever it was I'll figure it out Told Rolling Stone we're pleased at the court refused to engage in a battle of the experts especially given that defendant's resources vastly outweigh those of our clients here and it's about time that justice should serve the merits rather than deep pockets Of course you know she has more resources but won't that show at trial as well So trial which by the way is scheduled for late this summer the judge has said it for August 30th And since it's going to take a whole week to try which is sort of interesting So we should have a decision by Labor Day from the jury but the problem I think the plaintiffs actually face here is Taylor Swift being the defendant Taylor Swift is not just any recording artist Taylor Swift is iconic Take one of my daughters Caroline For example she just loves wife and could never believe that Taylor Swift copied anybody else's work because she is so awesome Now are you going to get a jury pool that has many people that feel that exact same way And the plaintiff will have no chance to convince them And yes they will get the opportunity to walk near them and ask them questions to try to sort out people who may be prejudiced But the reality is a lot of juries particularly Taylor Swift fans would die to serve on this jury And actually you get to see Taylor Swift up close and personal testifying And so there could be working real hard to get onto the jury even if they're not being completely forthright during voir dire and those jurors are going to be in the defendant's pocket from day one and there'll be nothing that can convince them And that is the real problem that the plane is half here at trial is that they're up against Taylor Swift and her legion of fans Is there a chance of settlement here It's been going on since 20 17 So I have no inside information on the settlement negotiations and there really hasn't been much in the press I'll simply note that Taylor Swift has placed her respect and honor as one of America's great singer songwriters above considerations as to defense costs Typically you get settlements when the defendant says this just isn't worth the money I'm paying my attorneys settle for low dollar amount even though I don't believe I did anything wrong I don't think that's going to happen with Taylor Swift This is one of her iconic songs and I don't think she's going to be wanting to be in a position where people would say ah she took the lyrics from somebody else even though the settlement agreement won't say that Again with no inside information I think it's unlikely that Taylor Swift will agree to any sort of financial settlement here Terry just to talk about the line of cases here there were several high profile copyright infringements lawsuits the blurred line case in particular there was a concern that artists songwriters would face a ton of lawsuits Did the tide change with the Led Zeppelin suit I certainly thought the pendulum was swinging back in favor of more reasoned review of these music cases Keep in mind that this is a lyrics case Blurred lines of Led Zeppelin and Sharon cases involve the actual tunes The notes the music involved which are very difficult to analyze for a disregard judge or a lay jurors Lyrics are something that you really don't expect have as much difficulty with and I will say I was surprised that the 9th circuit reversed and found that there was something about.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"And if you're going on a group ride make sure the lead biker knows where they're going Uh add quick question Where are you taking us Oh I have no idea what am I the leader because I was a phone now do with the red helmet Where is he And the rule to saving on motorcycle insurance is in 15 minutes Geico could save you 15% or more You're listening to balance and power with David Weston on Bloomberg radio A little over 20 years ago a new exhibition at the Brooklyn museum appropriately titled sensation created a furor in New York City when then mayor Rudy Giuliani demanded the museum stopped showing a painting of a black Madonna that included elephant dung in the art When the mayor threatened to stop public funding for the museum the matter ended up in court The saga is depicted in a new book called sensation The Madonna the mayor the media and the First Amendment written by the man who ran the museum at the time Arnold layman The exhibition was originally organized by the Royal Academy in London and included at that point the most progressive most avant garde artists working in Great Britain perhaps in all of Europe at that time And since we were going into the new 20 first century I thought that a groundbreaking exhibition like that would be great for the Brooklyn museum which had always had a very long history of doing contemporary art There was a lot of fewer in London as well But directed to different works of art when it came to Brooklyn we knew that the work would be provocative and challenging But we had no idea that the political issues would arise to create such a fewer not only nationally but internationally There are about a hundred works of art in the exhibition many of them more provocative than the holy virgin Mary by Chris ofili that then they are really really Giuliani Condemned but he wasn't alone It was condemned by the Catholic Church It was condemned condemned by many people very conservative people But we also have to remember that at that point Giuliani was not a mayor that people loved in New York City And he was in an undeclared race for the Senate against Hillary Clinton So he was appealing to the most conservative votes from upstate New York perhaps in Staten Island and other places because he had lost pretty much support in the entirety of New York City And this gave him an incredibly conservative platform which landed us all in federal court because we soothe the mayor and the city of New York and we see Giuliani not only as mayor but personally As I understand we were in part for 6 months Well I understand just to set that up and correct me if I'm wrong It's not just that the mayor condemned it He said let's cut off all funding And by the way maybe we'll even kick you out of your lease Yes He did He did cut off funding which is supplemental funding from the city And he threatened to throw out the board of trustees and as well as the director Which is the time in which we decided we had to go to court to stop this And that's how we landed in the federal district court First Giuliani appealed the ruling which was in favor of the Brooklyn museum and in favor of freedom of expression And we went on to the federal Court of Appeals which never had in fact the issue of decision because the mayor asked to settle the case before that decision which will I think was likely to be again in our favor The judge in district court demanded that Giuliani be deposed And that is another thing that the mayor is trying to avoid at all costs Yes I understand among other things I'm not sure that mayor Giuliani actually saw the work of art that he was objecting to He just had heard about it And he objected to it At the same time as you suggest it's a First Amendment case because it's the government try to curtail some form of expression Speech in the form of art had there ever been a similar case before it was as we say first impression No of course we were coming out of what we thought were the almost the end of the cultural wars You remember Robert mapplethorpe and entrez Serrano with his painting of the Christ figure at the Whitney museum and things had pretty much cooled down at that point but still was simmering under the surface and contemporary art There's no question contemporary art is tough It's difficult to understand It's particularly difficult to understand or come to terms with when you never set foot in front of it And I would say 99% of the people condemn the work never saw it But did they come to the museum a lot of people not the ones who condemned it But what did it do to your attendance Well interestingly most museums large museums who have big exhibitions estimate the number of people who will attend And we in fact that estimated a 170,000 people we had a 175,000 people We could have had I think tens of thousands more but we couldn't get people to leave the museum They were so engrossed so engaged with the works of art that spoke very directly to them particularly the young people who attended and the artists who attended But it was people's stay for hours longer than we had estimated they would stay for So in the end we had a few thousand more people who attended But those who did had an experience that I think they took a long time ever to forget If we take a look at what happened to mister ophelia's work afterwards if money does talk it talks pretty loudly about this work right Well you know we didn't get much support from many of the largest institutions art institutions in New York City And what's remarkable is the result is that the holy virgin Mary now is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art And for many years the great shark the Damian heard shark which was also condemned found its way into the Metropolitan Museum on long-term loan So it's works of art to have a way of meandering in terms of their meaning of their of their influence and you know as best not to condemn before we allow these works time to speak and time to take a rifle place in history So we were proud to have this exhibition we had never anticipated being in court for 6 months We never anticipated the amount of the death threats that I got bomb threats of the museum got our staff and I were all attacked on the street You know people say that a work of art is worth more than a thousand words It's very strong very important Thanks to Arnold layman former Brooklyn museum director and the author of the new book sensation Coming up the state of the Afghan economy.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"district court" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"In gold is based on the true story of Maria Altman a Jewish woman who won a battle with the Austrian government to regain ownership of a Gustav Klimt painting of her aunt after a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court involving the foreign sovereign immunity act The jaws to his have decided to take another case involving the same law to decide whether the heirs of a Holocaust survivor can regain a painting by French impressionist Camille pissarro that was stolen by the Nazis in 1939 My guest is MC sundial a chair of the appellate practice at buck altar MC tell us about the history of this 1897 painting Russell honore afternoon rain effect So the pissarro painting at issue in this case was purchased by the caesare family from a well-known art dealer who had acquired it from pizarro himself And it's a very special painting by zarro And in fact was created by pizarro during the Dreyfus affair which involved a violent anti semitic movement in France So he painted from his bedroom window there in France So in any event the cathedral had this painting it was passed down from generation to generation It was a family treasure It was on the living room wall at their home in Munich And then under the growing shadow of Nazi anti semitism really could fear packed up her belongings and prepared to flee Germany in 1939 and the Nazis would only allow her in active Visa if she sold them the painting And she sold it to them for $360 After that she never saw the painting again And the kasera family had no idea what happened to it but it was eventually sold through an LA art gallery and now is part of a Spanish nonprofit organization and foundation that has a museum and has displayed the painting Since 1993 This went to trial what did the trial judge find So actually this case is like many of the Holocaust art recovery cases and that has a very long history of bumping up and down within the court system So the litigation has been going on for 20 years And this is I think it's the force appeal of various issues in the case And I was involved with the earlier nice bucket proceeding in which summary judgment had been granted for the foundation against the cashiers and the 9th circuit overturned that thing no we think there is a travel issue of fact with regard to what Spanish law requires and who has proper right to the painting understand a property law which has a different sort of adverse possession law than California law And the nicer good said so we're going to send it back to the district court and the district court will hold a trial The district court how bad trials and still concluded that the foundation properly has the painting and the fears lost And now they're challenging that on a fundamental question which is which law do we apply under the sovereign immunities act to decide the choice of law question So is it federal common law that decides which law we apply Spanish or California Or is it California law that decides whether California or Spanish law should apply And they argue California laws should apply not Spanish law and so the outcome would have been different The heirs claimed that California law never allows the holder of stolen property to obtain good title That's frequently the argument that made which is you can't get good title from the fees right You can only get as good a title from someone as they had to give to you And that is commonly the rule in U.S. law in various state laws What's the rule in Spanish law In Spain it depends on kind of this question of really like how bad were you You can get possessory rights but it depends on your knowledge your participation in that In other words you can get good title pharmacies under certain circumstances if you are just in the same innocence of that How no idea that it was stolen you know all of these various things back to that question of willful blindness Last term that justice ruled that the Holocaust survivors who were suing couldn't press their claims for art stolen during World War II against Hungary and Germany in U.S. courts just yet Does that give any indication of how the court might rule here It's hard for me because I always hoped I would hope that it's going to be positive for the errors in these cases And I will say that they have been most interested in the Holocaust arch cases involving various issues involving the forms of an immunity that came up last term in the Germany case Years ago granted Maria Altman case because that also involved another issue with regard to foreign sovereign communities act So it seems very interested in this particular statute and how and when it applies and the gateway to our court system So we know Altman came out in favor of the claimant and the Germany case was not favorable to the claim and so I would say we were going in with a 50 50 batting average of foreign sovereign im Holocaust art cases So I'm hoping this one goes the way of Altman Thanks MC That's MC Singh of buck altar Coming up next the Supreme Court appears likely to reinstate the death penalty for the Boston Marathon bomber You're listening to Bloomberg When pone Sweeney world markets headlines and breaking news 24 hours a day at Bloomberg dot com the Bloomberg business app And.
WCBM 680 AM
"district court" Discussed on WCBM 680 AM
"No more. Now look at my feet do like pontoons. You know what they say. Big feet big infrastructure bill. Two trillion bucks most. You can't even count that high. But I can't because I'm a huge giant man. Right, Jimmy? The bull areas. The joy be you see that mean yet of all the different pictures of have with the Carters and somebody, obviously Photoshopped that I mean it just No, he shrink as we get older, but the Carters it was like, Yeah, they like they were girls that reversing Benjamin button or something Really weird. I mean, of course, I love all the means to come out after that, That's for sure. By the way, the chief judge of Maryland district courts has banned banned all court employees, bailiffs commissioners, constables clerk staff judges. From wearing face masks with law enforcement symbol of the thin blue line. Jeez, Chief Judge John Morrissey Senate email out ordering staff to cease wearing the masks. Across the 34 district court sites statewide. His order does not apply to courthouse visitors. I wonder if the police officers and sheriff's deputies then have to de uniforms. Before they go into the courts, because, after all, that could be a sign of bias and prejudice. We actually have a law enforcement officer in the courtroom, but again, the bailiffs they're in uniform. So what difference is the thin blue line masked matter anyway? In the email provided by the judiciary, Marcie wrote, the court had been made aware of an issue of perceived bias. Hmm. Maybe one person complained. Probably. Yeah, just takes one squeaky wheel on the staff of men wearing masks and other items of called in with a thin blue line quote the judiciary must maintain itself as an unbiased and independent branch of Maryland state government. Employees of the District Court, wearing any clothing item or peril, which promotes or displays a logo sticker pin patch slogan or sign, which may be perceived as showing bias or favoritism to a particular group of people could undermine the district Court's mission of Fair, Efficient and effective, effective justice for all. Call into question The judiciary is obligation to remain impartial and on biased end of quote. Well, you know, look, I think we all understand what he's trying to do here again. Then, in a courtroom that Zoe Justice system the scales Justice is Lady Justice is supposed to be blind, not supposed to favor one group over the other. But I'm just wondering how many people have visited the judge's courtroom wearing a black lives matter, a mask. We'll never hear about that, though. No? Because, you know, obviously nobody complained about that. No. And the barriers you say, maybe one person to play? Maybe there was a group of people. Maybe it's an organization. Maybe it's an anti cop. Organization that has complained My question is this. What about American flag pins? Are you allowed to wear an American flag pin on your lapel or anywhere on your person while you are in the court? Maybe that's next. Has a lot more people will be wearing the American flag pin since they can't do the thin blue line one so I don't know that the thin blue line is a reference of the blue and police uniforms. A simple warned show support elegant. It doesn't mean that you endorse police actions. It means you support the police department. Correct. It means that Could judge dawns a robe? Why? Because you know again the way the story goes. That guy do you remove all bias? You know, from all the clothing that you're wearing into the courtroom, you have a robe and you're just it's supposed to be now again. Is it fair to have a black robe? I don't know. I'm not going there, but somebody else probably will certainly not be a white road. That's for sure. That's so that's off limits completely. But anyway, we know where they're trying to say it should be unbiased. It should be non prejudicial. But I think that now all of a sudden we're Several almost over a year into this pandemic, and people been wearing masks have been customized. What happens if you worry mascot, you know, supports a certain cause that let's say the case comes up in court that before Judge And you were a mask that easy. There are four or against that particular lawsuit or that complaint. Will you be instructed to remove your mask? Ben don't know. These are all in very important questions. The Clyde boat writers, but on the shore of repeatedly president of statewide fo pieces, quote, we certainly understand what the judge is trying to accomplish here. With concern we would have is Is this type of restriction for all advocacy groups. That's true. That's a great point. And we'll have to wait and see if folks and I know it will be reporting to us here on the show. Whether everybody's required to move any kind of mask with any kind of message whatsoever, even if it says elect a judge Morrissey Alright, 7 13 traffic weather on the threes Now with the update here is the king of all traffic lug nuts. Johnson brought you is the service of Tripoli heating a dare to 95 is definitely stopping. Go now, Randall Mills through 1 75 a little bit further down and powder Mill road. The lane drop in. So it's just the morning heavy traffic. And, of course, the parkway is only two lanes South bound through that area that the minor wreck might just be a stalled vehicle interview Preparing Parkway. They're still in the media, and the rollback is there they'll be clearing that shortly. In the meantime, the back up on the outer hoop through Harford Road and through that area, minor slowing and beginning to build inner loop it green Spring, the Westside often on From about the I 70 down through Frederick Road and then getting a little bit better. As you're moving south towards Wilkens Avenue is a matter of fact. It just changed the camera there. That looks a lot better right now. For that traffic just south of I 70 and we've been okay at both the harbor tunnels and the key bridge. Tripoli, Heating and air has an amazing new offer from Deacon's Get up to $1800 an instant rebates, plus a 12 year warranty on parts and labor on any qualifying Dyken system. Tripoli a track dot com and 1 800 air repair. I'm Chuck would occur with traffic and weather on the threes. I'll talk radio 6 80 doubled. You see VM Weather Channel forecast is coming. What weekend.
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"With the deadly crash in Belmont. The Middlesex D. A's office is Dean Capt. Salis Wil face additional charges of murder and leaving the scene, causing death in connection with the killing of Henry Tapia that officials say was related to a road rage incident following a virtual arraignment date. Cambridge District Court Capt. Salis was ordered held without bail. In order to have no contact with the victim's family or any witnesses in the case. The defendant's due in court again March 1st House impeachment managers to deliver a single article of impeachment against former President Trump to the Senate this evening. Or spotted Mike Bauer with a timeline for the impeachment case. Presentation by the parties will commence the week of February. The eighth Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, says the House impeachment managers will deliver the single article of impeachment to the Senate tonight around 7 P.m.. Then tomorrow, senators will be sworn in his members of the impeachment court, then the president has one week until February, 2nd to answer the article of impeachment. By the following Monday, February 8, the president must submit his pretrial briefs, and the House must submit its response to the president's answer filed the previous week. February night. The House must admit it's pretrial rebuttal Brief. At that point, the trial can officially begin by MIKE Power, Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont expected to preside over the former president's second impeachment trial. The from Democrats, the Senate president, Pro TEM senators can preside over impeachment proceedings as long as the individual isn't the current president. The House is expected to officially transmit again Those articles sometime tonight around seven o'clock or so. The nation's highest court is dismissed cases over whether former president Trump unlawfully profited from his businesses. Since he is no longer in office. The Supreme Court saw no point in hearing cases that claimed former President Trump's businesses violated the Constitution's emoluments clause. It's an anti corruption provisioned meant to keep a president I'm conflicted Loyalties. The Supreme Court's dismissal leaves unresolved the question of whether former president Trump improperly profited from foreign governments when they booked rooms at one of his hotels. Business owners in Maryland in Washington, D C. Claimed they were deprived of business so foreign leaders could curry favor with Trump. Aaron Kotowski ABC NEWS NEW YORK A lawsuit against the city of Boston WBC stage RoHaas tells us it's safe nous who are bringing the case. The lawsuit, filed by The Satanic Temple of Salem over the weekend, is accusing city councilors of discriminating against minority religions. Specifically, during this election of who delivers thean vocation before council meetings. The lawsuit is trying to get the current selection process declared unconstitutional, based on discrimination. And for a judge to order that a sameness be allowed to get on the invocation schedule. The Satanic Temple reportedly has over 270,000 members with over 2400 living in Boston. The city is declining to comment on the pending litigation. James RoHaas, WBZ Boston's news radio, or 38 off the Wall Street on this Monday, and Rhodey is at Bloomberg, and we finished mixed. Yeah. Wall Street's indexes split it. More shares fell than Rose at the big board. The Dow off 37 NASDAQ gained 93 kind of a rally for some tech stocks There s and P 514 After top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said lawmakers will try to pass the financial relief bill in a month at the earliest. The market was hoping for something thing faster market concerned also, as the administration expressed his concern about covert vaccination delays. So good time for companies that make T p paper towels and cleaning products. Kimberly Clark is out with quarterly results that topped estimates for both earnings and revenue is the maker of Scott Branded products. Viva paper towels and Continental Toilet paper continues toe benefit from the pandemic surge in demand. But he also announcing an increase in its quarterly dividend that always helps andro day Bloomberg business on WBZ Boston's news radio No one in.