New Arizona Law Makes it First State to Retain Abandoned Digital Assets in Original Form

Arizona governor signs law for state to keep unclaimed crypto

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has signed a bill into law allowing the US state to keep unclaimed crypto and establish a “Bitcoin Reserve Fund” that won’t use any taxpayer money or state funds.

Hobbs signed House Bill 2749 into law on May 7, which allows Arizona to claim ownership of abandoned digital assets if the owner fails to respond to communications within three years.

The state’s custodians can stake the crypto to earn rewards or receive airdrops, which can then be deposited into what Arizona has called a Bitcoin and Digital Asset Reserve Fund.[…]

On May 3, Hobbs vetoed a similar Bitcoin reserve bill, Senate Bill 1025, which would have allowed the state to invest seized funds into Bitcoin, citing concerns over using public funds for “untested assets.”

Changpeng Zhao ‘CZ’ Confirms He Has Applied for Trump Pardon After Prison Term

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, confirmed on a podcast that he has formally applied for a presidential pardon from Donald Trump—less than a year after serving a four-month sentence in a U.S. federal prison.

Zhao shared the update on an episode of the Farohk Radio podcast, stating that his legal team submitted the application two weeks earlier.

“I’ve got lawyers applying. We only submitted after the Bloomberg article and the Wall Street Journal article came out,” he said, referring to March coverage that reported he was seeking a pardon while engaging in crypto business deals involving Trump family allies. “And I was like, well, if they are writing this article, we might as well officially apply.”

At the time, Zhao publicly rejected parts of those stories, calling them inaccurate and denied any active business negotiations involving Binance U.S.

S&P 500 Board Seats See Demographic Shift as White Men Lose Majority

White men no longer make up the majority of board seats at the largest US companies, a historic shift reflecting decades of pressure to diversify the upper ranks of corporate leadership.

For the first time, women and non-White men hold just over half, or 50.2%, of the more than 5,500 board seats at S&P 500 companies, according to data compiled for Bloomberg by ISS-Corporate. That compares with five years ago when White men accounted for almost 60% of the directorships.

BlackRock orders managing directors back to the office five days a week

BlackRock is ordering senior managers to return to the office five days a week in the latest sign that large financial services groups are tightening their flexible working policies.

The world’s largest asset manager is to tell staff as early as Thursday that its roughly 1,000 managing directors globally will be expected to work from the office full time, according to two people familiar with the plans. BlackRock declined to comment.

New York-based BlackRock tightened its rules on office attendance in 2023, requiring staff to attend at least four days a week. But the latest move is likely to cause upset among some staff who have become accustomed to working from home one day a week, one of the people said.