WSJ: Trump Family Has Had Talks to Take Financial Stake in U.S. Arm of Binance

Trump Family Has Held Deal Talks With Binance Following Crypto Exchange’s Guilty Plea

Representatives of President Trump’s family have held talks to take a financial stake in the U.S. arm of crypto exchange Binance, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would put Trump in business with the firm that pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering requirements.

At the same time, Binance’s billionaire founder, Changpeng Zhao—who served four months in prison after pleading guilty to a related charge—has been pushing for the Trump administration to grant him a pardon, people familiar with the matter said. Zhao, widely known as CZ, remains Binance’s largest shareholder.

The talks began after Binance reached out to allies of Trump last year offering to strike a business deal with the family as part of a plan to return the exiled company to the U.S.

U.S. Senate Takes First Big Step to Advance Stablecoin Bill

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has advanced the crypto industry’s stablecoin regulation bill, a first major step toward getting the effort to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

With its first committee approval, the bill that would regulate U.S. stablecoin issuers at the federal level now needs passage by the overall Senate, and a similar version also awaits approval in the House of Representatives. While a number of hurdles remain, including an eventual melding of the different bills from each chamber, the committee advanced the bill with a 18-6 vote.

Digital Asset Legislation Pushed as Trump Embraces Crypto Agenda

Representative Byron Donalds will introduce legislation on Friday to codify an executive order that President Donald Trump signed earlier this month that establishes a strategic Bitcoin reserve and US digital asset stockpile.

Passing the bill would ensure that the reserve and stockpile could not be eliminated by executive action from a future president, protecting the crypto-friendly policy that Trump embraced both on the 2024 campaign trail and in his second administration.

While the bill would require 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House, cryptocurrency-friendly policies have gained bipartisan support in this Congress.

THE CRISIS DEEPENS AS SEC STAFF AND BUDGET CUTS ARE DIRECTED

We have already discussed the losses to investors following prior instances in which SEC funding was reduced. But such a focus may still undercount the losses. When securities enforcement is constrained, the impact may not be discovered until much later. For example, Bernie Madoff went undiscovered for decades, and Enron, WorldCom, and others played games with accounting that were not detected for years, deepening the eventual losses. Today, in what is clearly an era of increasing deregulation, there may be entrepreneurs who are willing to gamble that violations will not be detected by undermanned regulators or that technical rules will not be enforced closely. For example, a company intent on launching takeovers may believe that it can ignore the requirement to immediately disclose its securities holdings once its ownership in a company crosses the Williams Act’s 5% threshold. The result likely would be an increasing number of undisclosed blocks as to which the target company could not identify the true owner. Such practices could erode the tradition of law compliance that has characterized most U.S. public companies.

Beyond actually unlawful acts or practices, there is also the possibility (particularly in gray areas of the law) of a “race to the bottom.” Many broker-dealers and investment advisers may avoid practices or products that they feel are inconsistent with their own high standards or that will result in increased oversight from the SEC. Of course, this is desirable. But if the SEC is perceived as weak or so overloaded that it cannot take on more enforcement actions, other less scrupulous broker-dealers may enter these gray areas in the belief that the SEC lacks the manpower to respond. Eventually, those with high standards may feel compelled to follow them. Although this injury is harder to measure, it too is a cost of a weak SEC.

Gold’s Historic Rally Brings Back BTC’s ‘Store of Value’ Debate

The recent market turmoil might have given gold the bragging rights of being the “store of value” while “digital gold” struggles, at least for now.

Gold futures for April delivery have surpassed $3,000 an ounce for the first time ever, marking a historic milestone for the precious metal. Spot gold is consolidating just below $3,000 an ounce, up 15% year-to-date, while its digital counterpart, bitcoin (BTC), is struggling—down 12% this year and hovering around $80,000.

This divergence underscores gold’s role as the ultimate safe-haven asset in the current economic environment.

Since mid-February, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have experienced only three days of inflows, causing total net inflows to decline from $40 billion to approximately $35 billion, according to Eric Balchunas, a senior Bloomberg ETF analyst.

How much does cryptocrime pay?

We are constantly hearing about crypto funds being stolen from exchanges, so we’ll start with stolen funds. Last year saw $2.2bn of crypto pilfered, with state-sponsored North Korean hackers taking over 60 per cent of the total.

Around half of North Korea’s hacks typically involve worker-related theft by North Korean IT workers who’ve infiltrated crypto and web3 companies. Frankly, we had no idea this was such a big deal, though we obviously have not been paying attention. A massive UN report published last year on sanctions violations reckoned that their surreptitious WFH tech army generates up to $600mn each year in salaries from western firms to finance the development of WMDs. And an investigation by Coindesk last year reported on an epidemic of (unwitting) sanctions-violations by crypto firms, with one prominent blockchain developer estimating that:

“The percentage of your incoming resumes, or people asking for jobs, or wanting to contribute – any of that stuff – that are probably from North Korea is greater than 50% across the entire crypto industry.”