As federal prosecutors seek to imprison former crypto darling Sam Bankman-Fried, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is attempting to push through Congress a bipartisan crackdown on money laundering in the crypto industry.

The Massachusetts Democrat is teaming up with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas to introduce new legislation on Wednesday that would seek to close loopholes in the financial system that pose national security risks by allowing digital assets to be used for money laundering, Warren’s office told CNN.

Due to time constraints, the Warren-Marshall crypto legislation has little chance of getting through this Congress. The bill would need to be reintroduced when the new Congress is seated.

The effort aims to level the playing field by forcing crypto firms to play by the same rules that apply to banks and traditional firms.

“I’ve been ringing the alarm bell in the Senate on the dangers of these digital asset loopholes, and I’m working in a bipartisan manner to pass common-sense crypto legislation to better safeguard U.S. national security,” Warren told CNN in an exclusive statement.

Alluding to the FTX scandal, Warren said the bankruptcy of a major crypto platform and criminal prosecution of its former CEO means that digital assets are “under serious scrutiny across the political spectrum.”

The push from Warren and Marshall comes just a day after Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of crypto exchange FTX, was indicted for money laundering and multiple other federal offenses. Prosecutors allege Bankman-Fried engaged in a global scheme to deceive and defraud customers, investors, lenders and the campaign finance system.

The new bill, called the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, would attack money laundering by attempting to bring the digital asset ecosystem into compliance with the existing system of anti-money laundering in the worldwide financial system.

The legislation would direct the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) within the Treasury Department to designate digital asset wallet providers, miners, validators and others as money service businesses. That in turn would extend responsibilities in the Bank Secrecy Act to the crypto industry, including Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements.

The Treasury Department warned earlier this year that ransomware hackers, drug traffickers and fraudsters are using digital assets to launder illicit proceeds. US officials have also alleged that North Korea, Iran, Russia and other countries have turned to crypto to launder money and even get around sanctions.

“Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, our government enacted meaningful reforms that helped the banks cut off bad actors’ from America’s financial system,” Marshall said in a statement. “Applying these similar policies to cryptocurrency exchanges will prevent digital assets from being abused to finance illegal activities without limiting law-abiding American citizens’ access.”

The legislation comes as Warren and other lawmakers are scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday about the crypto crash and the harm to consumers.

The bill would also force regulators to push ahead with new restrictions aimed at closing a gap for digital wallets that lets people bypass anti-money laundering and sanctions checks.

Specifically, it would direct FinCEN to finalize and implement a rule proposed in 2020 that would require banks and money service businesses to verify customer and counterparty identifies, keep records and file reports linked to unhosted wallets or ones in jurisdictions that are not compliant with the Bank Secrecy Act.

Other requirements in the legislation include:

• Banning banks and other financial institutions from using or transacting with anonymity-enhancing technologies such as digital asset mixers and from handling or transacting with digital assets that have used those technologies.
• Extending Bank Secrecy Rules on reporting of foreign bank accounts to include digital assets by requiring Americans engaged in digital asset transaction greater than $10,000 through offshore accounts to file a report with the Internal Revenue Service.
• Directing regulators to strengthen enforcement of Bank Secrecy Act compliance by establishing compliance examination and review process for money service businesses.
• Cracking down on digital asset ATMs by making sure operators and administrators submit and update the physical addresses of their kiosks.

The stunning revelations in the Bankman-Fried charges underscore how crypto remains the wild west of the financial world. But it’s not clear whether the FTX scandal will be enough to prompt Congress to take major action.

Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at BTIG, told CNN that despite all the “finger pointing” over FTX, it is “exceedingly difficult” to see Congress passing comprehensive crypto reform anytime soon.

“Everyone on Capitol Hill can agree that Bankman-Fried is a crook,” Boltansky said, “but when we move from the high level to the ground level, it becomes clear that legislative hurdles and potholes remain.”

Boltansky said those obstacles include jurisdictional battles and the “reality that Congress tends to have a relatively short attention span.”

Still, a more targeted legislative package aimed at stablecoins or money laundering has potential to get through Congress next year, he said.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/elizabeth-warren-unveils-bipartisan-bill-to-crack-down-on-crypto-money-laundering/ar-AA15gEwH

Judge Orders Tesla To Upgrade Customer's Self-Driving Computer For Free On His Model 3

This is a big victory for those who own Teslas built since 2016.

A US judge has ordered Tesla to perform a free upgrade of the self-driving computer in a customer's Model 3 in order to allow him to have Full-Self Driving without having to pay extra. According to Electrek, the customer, Ian Jordan, bought a new Model 3 a few years ago with the understanding it had FSD hardware. It did, but not the upgraded version.

https://carbuzz.com/news/judge-orders-tesla-to-upgrade-customers-self-driving-computer-for-free-on-his-model-3

The cost of produce in the U.S. is continuing to rise as crops dwindle from increasing levels of climate change.

Vegetable prices in the U.S. are around 40% higher this year and experts are saying climate change has played a prominent role. Bloomberg is reporting that Arizona produces 90% of leafy greens in the U.S. from November through March each year, but crop production has been greatly affected this year by a drought forming from reduced water levels in the Colorado River.

The decreasing amount of snow and rain has dwindled in recent years, moving into its 23rd year of drought, causing the Colorado River to shrink, according to research by Nature Climate Change.

The U.S. announced it plans to withhold about one-fifth of the water next year that’s given to Arizona’s farmers as climate change and the drought impact the Colorado River.

Meanwhile, California is known as the top state in the U.S. for agriculture but has faced severe droughts this year, resulting in $3 billion worth of losses, and after Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Nicole made landfall in Florida, it cost the produce industry nearly $2 billion across the state.

The loss in agriculture has prompted a rise in retail prices across the U.S., helping to drive inflation costs to the highest levels in 40 years. “There’s just not enough water to grow everything that we normally grow,” Don Cameron, president of the State Board of Food and Agriculture, told the Times of San Diego.

The cost of produce was up by 38.1% in November from the previous month, and the producer price index, which measures what companies are paid for their products, increased by 0.3% in November compared to the previous month, and increased 7.4% from a year ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Scientists have warned against climate change for decades, saying increased global temperatures will bring about extreme and unusual weather changes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported as of October of this year, there have been more than a dozen weather or climate disaster events, resulting in over $1 billion in losses in each instance.

“Every year the farmers who feed our nation get smarter and more resilient, but it’s increasingly stressful to adapt to the extreme variability they face,” Erica Kistner-Thomas, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, told USA Today. She added, “One year they’ll have the best year ever and then the next year they’ll be hit with a major flooding event or drought.”

Paul Mitchell, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison told the outlet although “crops are more resilient to dry weather than they were 20 years ago,” as the events devastating crops become more frequent, crops won’t be able to adapt quickly enough.

“U.S. agricultural productivity is rising, but it’s not becoming more resilient to extremes,” Mitchell said and questioned, “When bad years start to line up, are we doing things to prepare for the unusual as it becomes more usual?”

https://gizmodo.com/food-prices-climate-change-inflation-drought-1849883609

What your best Investment?
Weapons Even self defence courses traning.
Now it's time to learn martial arts.
The world Will look like GTA San Andres or Even worse.
 

Banks aren't ready to buy Bitcoin but now Bitcoin is buying bank? This is the most mind-blowing news of the year

Why did FTX buy into a U.S. bank owned by a co-creator of ‘Inspector Gadget’?

Before FTX collapsed spectacularly last month, the exchange operated like most other cryptocurrency exchanges: in the dark, outside the banking system, and offshore. Cryptocurrency exchanges often struggle to access the U.S. banking system, and so they look for alternate routes to cash their checks: shell companies that hop from bank to bank before vanishing into thin air, dollar-denominated assets that can be cashed out abroad, or, in this case, simply buying a bank.

“Buying a bank often has been a holy grail” for companies that have trouble establishing traditional banking relationships, says Carol Van Cleef, who chairs Washington law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings’s blockchain practice. If an exchange owns a piece of the bank of which it is also a customer, “getting debanked is going to be a little more difficult,” she says..

Crypto firms are hardly the only ones to try to avoid this fate by buying a bank of their own. SunFirst Bank, for instance, banked semi-legal poker sites from 2009 to 2010 after a $10 million investment from a dodgy payment processing firm before the FDIC shut it down in 2011.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-did-ftx-buy-u-150330319.html

He didn't explain his comments because he doesn't have facts or reliable data to back them.

• The cofounder and former CEO of bankrupt crypto trading firm FTX was arrested in the Bahamas after the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government.
• His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multi-billion dollar implosion of FTX last month.
• Bankman-Fried is expected to be extradited to the United States.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities this evening after the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government, setting the stage for extradition and U.S. trial for the onetime crypto billionaire at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse.

Bankman-Fried was expected to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multi-billion dollar implosion of FTX last month.

Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Twitter that the federal government anticipated moving to “unseal the indictment in the morning.”

Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said that the United States was “likely to request his extradition.”

In a statement, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said, “The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law.”

“While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere,” continued the statement.

Bahamian regulators and FTX’s attorneys had been engaged in a bruising battle in chambers and in the court of public opinion. Earlier Monday, FTX attorneys accused the Bahamian government of allegedly working with Bankman-Fried to spirit away FTX assets from company control and into into crypto wallets controlled by Bahamian regulators. Bankman-Fried’s arrest by Bahamas law enforcement, as well as his expected extradition, suggest that close cooperation between the Bahamas and the U.S. will continue to evolve throughout the bankruptcy proceedings.

In November, FTX and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried stepped down from his role as CEO. The crypto trading firm imploded in spectacular fashion following a run on assets similar to a bank run.

FTX’s collapse was precipitated when reporting from CoinDesk revealed a highly concentrated position in self-issued FTT coins, which Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund Alameda Research used as collateral for billions in crypto loans. Binance, a rival exchange, announced it would sell its stake in FTT, spurring a massive withdrawal in funds. The company froze assets and declared bankruptcy days later. Reports later claimed that FTX had commingled customer funds with Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, and that billions in customer deposits had been lost along the way.

Bankman-Fried was replaced by John J. Ray III, who had overseen Enron’s bankruptcy. Ray is also scheduled to testify before Congress this week. In prepared remarks released Monday, Ray said that FTX went on a “spending binge” from late 2021 through 2022, when approximately ”$5 billion was spent buying a myriad of businesses and investments, many of which may be worth only a fraction of what was paid for them,” and that the firm made more than $1 billion in “loans and other payments...to insiders.”

Ray also confirmed media reports that FTX customer funds were commingled with assets from Alameda Research. Alameda used client funds to do margin trading, which exposed them to massive losses, Ray said.

Legal experts told CNBC that if the federal government pursues wire or bank fraud charges that Bankman-Fried could face life in prison without the possibility of supervised release. Such a severe punishment would be unusual but not extraordinary. Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, an effective life sentence, for his massive ponzi scheme. FTX’s collapse has already triggered the demise of BlockFi Lending, and has thrown the entire space into disarray.


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-arrested-in-the-bahamas-after-us-files-criminal-charges.html

value sits below the market and then from that people then trade a premium and speculate a price to do business on depending on demand

the ATH is a speculative PREMIUM not value

value is found at the bottom

PHOENIX, U.S. -- The father of Taiwan's chip industry said geopolitics have drastically changed the situation facing semiconductor makers and warned that "globalization and free trade are almost dead," and unlikely to come back.

Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., was speaking at an event in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday where the company marked the symbolic first equipment installation at its new plant.

It is TSMC's first advanced chip plant in the U.S. in more than two decades, and Chang said a lot of "hard work" remained to make it a success.

He compared the current $40 billion project to when TSMC built its first plant in the U.S. in Camas, Washington, in 1995, just eight years after the world's biggest contract chipmaker was founded.

"Twenty-seven years have passed and [the semiconductor industry] witnessed a big change in the world, a big geopolitical situation change in the world," Chang said. "Globalization is almost dead and free trade is almost dead. A lot of people still wish they would come back, but I don't think they will be back."

His comments come amid growing fears that tensions between the U.S. and China over chips are splitting the global tech supply chain into two camps. Washington's crackdown on Beijing's chip ambitions, seen most recently in new restrictions rolled out in October, have made it increasingly difficult for companies like TSMC to serve clients in China.

Chang said he had always dreamed of building a chip plant, or fab, in the U.S. because of his own background. He was educated and worked in the U.S. for several decades. But his first experience did not go smoothly.

"It was, I thought, a dream fulfilled," Chang said. "But it [the first plant] ran into cost problems. We ran into people problems, we ran into cultural problems. The dream fulfilled became a nightmare fulfilled. It took us several years to untangle ourselves from my nightmare, and I decided that I needed to postpone the dream."

In the decades that followed, TSMC focused on building up cutting-edge chip production capacity in its home market, a strategy that helped the company keep costs down while continually honing its technological know-how.

Chang said the tool installation event -- an important milestone in building a chip plant -- signaled the end of one phase in making its U.S. bid pay off.

"The romance of the beginning is lost and the initial excitement is gone. A lot of hard work remains," the industry veteran said. But Chang added that TSMC is much more "prepared" than its first time building a chip plant in the U.S. with the support of the U.S. government.

A large delegation of top chip and tech industry CEOs attended the event, as did U.S. President Joe Biden, who lauded the plant as a win for the U.S. in its push to make cutting-edge chips domestically. TSMC announced the same day that it will triple its Arizona investment to $40 billion in order to bring its most advanced chip technology to the country.

Washington has cited national security concerns and supply issues for wanting to bring vital semiconductor production back to its shores. Many industry executives agree that the era of globalization is retreating, and that sourcing locally is now a top priority.

Lisa Su, CEO of chip developer AMD, told Nikkei Asia on the sidelines of the event that supply chain continuity is now one of the top priorities for companies like hers.

"The entire semiconductor ecosystem is ready to step up and work together. ... The industry has been through so much in the past few years. Having more geographically diversified capacity is so important," Su said, referring to the unprecedented chip shortage. "At the end of the day, what we want to do is ensure that our most important chips have a resilient supply chain."

Apple CEO Tim Cook also embraced the idea of onshoring chip production despite his company for years relying on global suppliers to lower the costs of its "designed in the U.S." products.

"Over the past several years, the progress we've made with Apple silicon has transformed our devices. It has unlocked new levels of performance for our users, enabling them to do things they could never do before," said Cook at the event. "And now, thanks to the hard work of so many people, these chips can be proudly stamped 'Made in America.' This is an incredibly significant moment. It's the chance for the United States to usher in a new era in advanced manufacturing."

"Building fabs is clearly very hard work," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Nikkei Asia on the sidelines. "Today's event is marking that TSMC will be a fundamental partner of every company's aim for [supply chain] resilience. It will make TSMC even stronger. As TSMC increases its own supply chain resilience [by building a fab in the U.S.], it will give us resilience, too."

Apple, AMD and Nvidia are set to be among the first customers for TSMC's Arizona plant.



https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-founder-Morris-Chang-says-globalization-almost-dead

what do you mean not doing well

forget the premium market of speculation.. that is not where value or store of value sits.

look at the real value(its found below the market)

2010: $0.03
2012: $3.00
2016: $300
2018: $3000
2020: $5000
2020: $15000

Basically, I'm curious to know what a bitcoin or any cryptocurrency unit looks like in real life.

• The global economy has entered a period of elevated volatility, and previous investing approaches won't work anymore, BlackRock said.
• A recession is imminent but central banks won't be able to support markets this time by loosening policy, according to the money manager.
• "Recession is foretold as central banks race to try to tame inflation. It's the opposite of past recessions," BlackRock strategists said.

A worldwide recession is just around the corner as central banks boost borrowing costs aggressively to tame inflation — and this time, it will ignite more market turbulence than ever before, according to BlackRock.

The global economy has already exited a four-decade era of stable growth and inflation to enter a period of heightened instability — and the new regime of increased unpredictability is here to stay, according to the world's biggest asset manager.

That means policymakers will no longer be able to support markets as much as they did during past recessions, a team of BlackRock strategists led by vice chairman Philipp Hildebrand wrote in a report titled 2023 Global Outlook.

"Recession is foretold as central banks race to try to tame inflation. It's the opposite of past recessions," they said. "Central bankers won't ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. Equity valuations don't yet reflect the damage ahead."

The prospect of limited policy support means investors need more dynamic methods — involving more frequent portfolio changes and taking a more "granular view on sectors, regions and sub-asset classes" — to navigate the volatility ahead, according to BlackRock.

`Regime of greater macro volatility'

"What worked in the past won't work now," the strategists said. "The old playbook of simply 'buying the dip' doesn't apply in this regime of sharper trade-offs and greater macro volatility. We don't see a return to conditions that will sustain a joint bull market in stocks and bonds of the kind we experienced in the prior decade."

Wall Street banks from Morgan Stanley and Bank of America to Deutsche Bank have warned that US stocks could plunge by more than 20% in 2023 due to an economic downturn and liquidity risks fueled by the Federal Reserve's interest-rate increases. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon sees just a 35% chance that the US economy avoids a recession.

A slowdown in the housing market, delays in corporate investment plans, a decline in consumers' savings and deteriorating CEO confidence are early signs of the oncoming economic slump, according to BlackRock.

Still, the stock market hasn't yet factored in the potential magnitude of the impending economic downturn, the strategists said.

"We don't think equities are fully priced for recession," they added. "Corporate earnings expectations have yet to fully reflect even a modest recession. This keeps us tactically underweight developed market equities."

The S&P 500 index of large-cap US stocks is up more that 12% from a 23-month low reached in October, spurred mainly by expectations that the Federal Reserve will slow the pace of its interest-rate increases after a recent retreat in inflation.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/blackrock-recession-warning-stock-market-analysis-2023-economic-outlook-2022-12

The solution is Simple leave fiat banks and go crypto.

What you proposed is a country spending money on subsidizing miners in the same country and then having them sell these coins to investors who would buy it... because ...why? Why would outside investors buy Salvador Bitcoin and not Bitcoin or Ghana Bitcoin or 600 West Third Street Mansfield issued by the Mansfield council in Ohio?

And if wood was a good investment, it would have been so without any token, right? So, there was no need for named token in the first place.
Second, you might want to check those prices again, lumber is taking a tumble and firewood will soon follow once things settle down and all the fear about freezing finally becomes what it was supposed to be, a debunked myth.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/lumber-prices-hit-lowest-level-since-2020-housing-market-slows-2022-12
https://www.investing.com/commodities/lumber

If you would have bought lumber in 1993, you would now have a loss, a 30 years asset that is in red hardly sounds "outperforming", what you're looking for is more speculation or, since we're talking about crypto, pump and dump behavior.