Free Republic

Central bank digital currencies are feverishly being developed all over the globe, and this is something that should deeply alarm all of us. For a moment, I would like for you to imagine a world where the government instantly knows whenever you buy or sell something. No transaction would ever be truly private, not even your most personal or embarrassing ones. In addition, your money would not be truly your own under such a system. Your access to the digital currency system would be a privilege which could potentially be suspended or revoked with the click of a mouse. All...

Many in the virtual currency industry have been confused and bedeviled by the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) gradual and ill-explained encroachment on their world, with frequent claims from SEC Chair Gary Gensler that most cryptocurrencies should be properly seen legally as "securities" that ought to be regulated by his agency. That would potentially make lots of legit businesses suddenly illegal dealers in "unregistered securities." In a decision last week in an ongoing bankruptcy case of Voyager Digital Holdings, U.S. bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Wiles in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York laid into SEC...

Silvergate! Customers withdrew about $8.1 billion of digital-asset deposits from the bank during the fourth quarter, which forced it to sell securities and related derivatives at a loss of $718 million, according to a statement Thursday. Executives said on a conference call that Silvergate may become a takeover target. The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX sparked a crisis for Silvergate, which held deposits for FTX units and Alameda Research, the trading firm at the heart of the crypto exchange’s downfall. Lawmakers are also scrutinizing the bank. Silvergate plunged 44% to $12.34 at 9:48 a.m. in New York, the steepest decline...

Like the disastrous Bernie Madoff debacle where investors lost millions of dollars, Sam Bankman-Fried has apparently cost investors like Steph Curry, Shaq and Tom Brady considerable sums as well. What do Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried have in common? Greedy investors who apparently didn’t bother to monitor what was going on. Yes, had they monitored FTX, Bankman-Fried’s company, they would have noticed that FTX held less than $1bn in liquid assets against $9bn in liabilities. Generally, with buyer beware, the onus falls on investors to monitor what is going on. But The Fed’s completely dropped the ball on Bernie Madoff...

Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt digital-asset exchange FTX was hit by a mysterious outflow of about $662 million in tokens in the past 24 hours, the latest twist in one of the darkest periods for the crypto industry. And like that, O’Biden’s Treasury secretary Janet Yellen FTX Debacle said that it shows need for crypto regulation. Or Yellen could suggest a “buyer beware” tactic, but she is part of the most aggressively regulatory administration in history, MORE regulation is needed! /sarc Regulate, regulate, dance to THEIR music! At least Yellen is noticing Bankman-Fried (a new twist on Kentucky-Fried) and FTX since she...

The executive order calls upon the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) to collaborate with the state’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) and Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency (BCSH). Together, the state agencies are tasked with devising “potential blockchain applications and ventures,” which could include applications in the “private sector, academia, and community.” It also orders the DFPI to shape a regulatory approach to cryptocurrency, create consumer protections, as well as produce educational materials that inform California’s residents about both the risks and benefits associated with cryptocurrencies. The order specifically says the materials will...

When Britain voted for Brexit, Macron boasted that Paris would eat the City of London’s lunch. It didn’t quite work out that way, with most league tables continuing to put London as the number one or two financial centre, with not a single EU city in the top ten. Emmanuel Macron's government has now announced that it has invited Binance, a crypto exchange site, to set up a European HQ in Paris. You have to ask: has Macron leapt on a bandwagon which has already started to lose its wheels? The warning sign for cryptocurrencies is not so much that...

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland ... As a member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum’s board of directors ... Freeland’s maternal grandfather Mykhailo Khomiak was the Nazi regime’s senior editor of the Ukrainian antisemitic daily newspaper Krakivs’ki visti (News of Krakow). ... Her response to the famous trucker convoy in Ottawa, legally and peacefully protesting the government’s punitive COVID-19 mandates, was nothing if not totalitarian in nature. Freeland stated that banks would be able to freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order. The same would apply to...

With the conflict between Russia and Ukraine dominating the recent news cycle, it’s likely you’ve been hearing more and more about cryptocurrency. Countries around the globe have imposed sanctions on Russia and frozen accounts of oligarchs. This has sent the Russian Ruble into a tailspin. When fiat currency is in decline, people ad business will search out other means of payment.As a result, we’ve seen cryptocurrencies used to supplement fiat currency as well as to aid Ukraine through large donations of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polkadot. The crisis in Ukraine has only aided in the adoption of cryptocurrency and the trend...

The International Monetary Fund is warning there is a growing connection between cryptocurrency and financial markets, which poses risks to the financial system. In a report, the international body says digital assets are no longer on the “fringe” of the financial system. Given their high volatility, the rising correlation between cryptocurrencies and stocks could soon pose risks to financial stability— especially in countries that have adopted digital units. “The correlation of crypto assets with traditional holdings like stocks has increased significantly, which limits their perceived risk diversification benefits and raises the risk of contagion across financial markets,” the IMF wrote....

In a barbed tweet yesterday, NSA consultant turned whistleblower Edward Snowden said that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could “casually [annihilate] the savings of every wage-worker” in the country. Snowden began his attack against the nascent promise of CBDCs—digital currencies backed by the monetary reserves of a central bank—in response to an article by New York Times guest columnist Dr. Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policies at Cornell University. Dr. Prasad highlighted the growing move towards a cashless economy, a move signaled by the research and trials of CBDCs in countries such as China, Sweden, Japan, Britain, as well...

China expanded its escalating crackdown on cryptocurrencies on Friday when its central bank declared that all activities related to digital coins are “illegal” and must be banned.In a statement the People’s Bank of China said the latest notice was to further prevent the risks surrounding crypto trading and to maintain national security and social stability.Curiously, the statement is dated September 15, but only hit the central bank's website at 5pm on Friday.PBOC’s announcement about ban crypto got widespread today is was ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 15TH, but got posted online today. The market already reacted on those regulatory fud.https://t.co/BPlVQEMVMt pic.twitter.com/e0U7gbEHnY —...

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine,”- Paul Krugman, slamming the internet in 1998"Bitcoin Is Evil"- Paul Krugman, NYT Op-Ed Dec 2013“Bitcoin isn’t a new innovation; it’s been around since 2009, and in all that time nobody seems to have found any good legal use for it. It’s not a convenient medium of exchange; it’s not a stable store of value;...

The war of words unleashed on Wall Street and in Washington by Wednesday’s announcement of an unexpectedly high rate of consumer price inflation is escalating by the day. Legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller had warned on Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal that the Fed was enabling fiscal and market excesses by not standing up to the political whims of Congress; he stated on CNBC that the Fed’s overly accommodative monetary policies posed a risk to the status of the United States dollar as a global reserve currency. Refuting such concerns, Paul Krugman asks today in his column for...

The Democrats are set to pass yet another big-spending bill they claim is COVID-19 relief. As with previous bills during the pandemic, there’s less COVID relief in it and a whole lot of other things that have nothing to do with helping Americans struggling through the pandemic. It’s packed with reckless spending that will typify the Democrats’ control of Washington over the next couple of years. The very first congressional COVID “relief” bill struck me as big spenders treating it as a genie jumping out of a Christmas tree. That was the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, passed in late March...

Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies. The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins, media reports say. The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, is a restricted area.

The future of money might be a digital version of the cash that’s already in people’s wallets—potentially upending the currency system that the world has known for many decades. Such a future, of course, might be a disappointment to many libertarians and tech-savvy investors who are pinning their hopes (and in some cases their money) on private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Instead, central bankers and governments—the entities that cryptocurrencies’ backers hoped to render obsolete—are increasingly warming to the idea of “digitizing” their own national currencies. That is, they would issue money that would exist only virtually, without a paper or...

Editor’s Note: During the week, Townhall sheds light on all the claptrap and win-lose deals playing out in Washington and on Wall Street. But on Wednesdays, we feature a unique essay on an idea outside of our usual fare.Today, Jeff Brown, a top technology analyst and Official Wealth Creation Expert to Townhall Media, reveals what the mainstream media won’t tell you about the future of cryptocurrencies, and shows how the crypto “insiders” are preparing to profit in the years ahead.The third wave of the blockchain boom is ramping up…By now, most people are familiar with bitcoin’s massive rise… from less than...

U.S.-based custody bank Northern Trust is helping traditional "mainstream" hedge funds expand into cryptocurrencies, Forbes reported Tuesday. Northern Trust's president, Pete Cherecwich, told the news organization that the financial services firm is working with three hedge funds – whose names he declined to provide – to add cryptocurrency investments to their portfolios. To that end, Northern Trust has reportedly created new administrative tools and services specifically for cryptocurrency assets. These include tools to price and trade cryptocurrencies, according to the report. Cherecwich said: "You can take anything today. You can take movie rights, you can take all sorts of entities,...

Reports that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a criminal probe into potential illegal manipulation of cryptocurrency prices has seen bitcoin lose 3 percent this morning, down to just over $7,300 in the early morning hours. The DoJ, as reported by Bloomberg, is investigating illegal tactics of traders, including the issuing of fake orders for cryptocurrencies, causing their prices to go up and down artificially. In cooperation with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the DoJ is specifically probing what is commonly known in the trading world as “spoofing” and “washing”.