Amalgam Founder Charged With Running ‘Sham Blockchain’, Taking $1M From Investors

Prosecutors have charged Jeremy Jordan-Jones, the self-styled founder of a now-defunct crypto startup called Amalgam, with fraud, alleging that he swindled investors in his “sham blockchain” of more than $1 million, using the money to fund a lavish lifestyle.

According to prosecutors, Jordan-Jones painted Amalgam as a tech company that created blockchain-based point-of-sale payment systems, which he claimed had multi-million-dollar partnerships with sports teams including the Golden State Warriors and a professional soccer team in England’s Premier League, as well as a big restaurant conglomerate with more than 500 restaurants. None of these partnerships existed, prosecutors said. Jordan-Jones also allegedly solicited investments from would-be investors by telling them the money would be used to facilitate the listing of Amalgam’s non-existent crypto token on a crypto exchange.

What We Lost After SEC Eliminated Regional Director Role

My 16 years at the SEC, including my five years as regional director, repeatedly demonstrated the benefits of strong regional leadership and the advantages of a single local leader managing multiple functions.

For example, in my role overseeing enforcement, my familiarity with the office’s personnel and control over its resources helped me assemble effective investigation and litigation teams, and ensure they had the organizational support for their work. As one of the agency’s most senior officials, I could leverage my seniority and experience within the agency to clear hurdles facing our cases with decision-makers in Washington. And I could effectively manage the conduct of investigations and litigation in a way that would be far more limited for some random official sitting thousands of miles away who does not personally know and regularly interact with the legal team. […]

Similarly, the benefits of having someone able to coordinate efforts between the enforcement and examination programs, and able to allocate that office’s resources, will be lost when any broad-based effort requires the involvement of multiple SEC officials across multiple offices. One of my key responsibilities as regional director was ensuring investment firm misconduct identified by the exam staff received appropriate enforcement attention, a task rendered more difficult without an individual leader straddling both programs.

Bitcoin Sets New High Above $111K, 15 Years After Developer Paid 10,000 BTC for Two Pizzas

Bitcoin Pizza Day is here and it just got its most fitting tribute yet: a new all-time high.

Bitcoin surged past $111,800 early Thursday, setting a fresh record. 15 years ago on this day developer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas, then worth roughly $40.

The May 22, 2010, purchase marked the first recorded commercial transaction using BTC, a turning point that took the asset from cypherpunk code to actual currency.

That same 10,000 BTC can buy over 70 million pizzas at current prices. It is worth over $1.1 billion as of Thursday.

Trump’s crypto dinner cost over $1 million per seat, on average

More than 200 wealthy, mostly anonymous crypto buyers are coming to Washington on Thursday to have dinner with President Donald Trump. The price of admission: $55,000 to $37.7 million.

That’s how much the 220 winners of a contest to meet Trump spent on his volatile cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, according to an analysis by the blockchain analytics company Nansen.

The top $TRUMP coin holders at a specific time — determined by the dinner’s organizers — secured a seat.

In total, the winners spent $394 million on Trump’s official cryptocurrency, Nansen found, though some have sold portions of or all of their holdings since the contest ended. The amount varied significantly by spender, with the top seven winners each spending more than $10 million and the bottom 24 each spending less than $100,000. A third of the winners — 67 of them — spent more than a million dollars, the research shows. The average winner spent $1,788,994.42. Source: