#cryptocurrency

See tagged statuses in the local BookWyrm community

For the curious among you, I really do recommend you read the man's text messages. Especially the text messages to/from Epstein's bestie . While you're there you can also read about how Jeffrey Epstein was funding the core development team starting from around 2015 at (possibly until his death).

Also made some improvements to the Epstein text messages page:

- Highlighted important names ("trump", "jabor", "brock", "", "", "", etc)

- Deanonymized (with help) as many of the emails as I could manage based on various kinds of clues, including the signature lines.

- Added an "Other Files" section at the bottom with preview text + links to raw files that are neither emails nor iMessage log files.

- Various other forms of analysis (common signatures, …

table of "sent from my iPhone" style signatures used by epstein and friends
Abbreviations Used Frequently In These Chats ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ Abbreviation ┃ Translation ┃ ┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩ │ AD │ Abu Dhabi │ │ Barak │ Ehud Barak (Former Israeli prime minister) │ │ Barrack │ Tom Barrack │ │ BG │ Bill Gates │ │ Bill │ Bill Gates │ │ Brock │ Brock Pierce │ │ DB │ Deutsche Bank (maybe??) │ │ HBJ │ Hamad bin Jassim (Former Qatari prime minister) │ │ Jabor │ "an influential man in Qatar" │ │ Jagland │ Thorbjørn Jagland │ │ Jeffrey Wernick │ Right wing crypto bro │ │ Hoffenberg │ Steven Hoffenberg (Epstein's ponzi scheme partner) │ │ KSA │ Kingdom of Saudi Arabia │ │ Kwok │ Chinese criminal Miles Kwok AKA Miles Guo AKA Guo Wengui │ │ Mapp │ Kenneth E. Mapp (VI Governor) │ │ Masa │ Masayoshi Son (Softbank) │ │ MBS │ Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (Saudi ruler) │ │ MBZ │ Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (Emirates sheikh) │ │ Jared │ Jared Kushner │ │ Miro │ Miroslav Lajčák │ │ Mooch │ Anthony 'The Mooch' Scaramucci (Skybridge crypto bro) │ │ Terje │ Terje Rød-Larsen │ │ Woody │ Woody Allen │ │ Zug │ City in Switzerland (crypto hub)
[06/18/19 06:28:46 AM] Epstein: How dare you refer to your sweetheart by such a phrase. Shame on you , boy I've been having fun with this [06/18/19 06:29:18 AM] Epstein: If I were you. Id sign that dollar quickly. As the interest expense is getting very very high [06/18/19 06:30:37 AM] Epstein: All I need to say. Is " its so beautiful - he shares the same view of you " and Lucifer will look like mother Theresa [06/18/19 06:32:24 AM] Epstein: Do you think when she wakes up in the morning she looks a little like Donald [06/18/19 06:32:35 AM] Epstein: Sam jowls [06/18/19 06:32:39 AM] Epstein: Same [06/18/19 06:33:39 AM] __________________: Scary [06/18/19 06:33:47 AM] Bannon (?): Too much coke [06/18/19 06:37:46 AM] Epstein: Too much ugly [06/18/19 06:37:57 AM] Epstein: Miro ? [06/18/19 06:38:15 AM] Epstein: Im meeting council of Europe head thurs. to push [06/18/19 11:18:08 AM] Bannon (?): Working miro [06/18/19 12:22:42 PM] Bannon (?): Shanahan blown up by CCP [06/18/19 12:30:15 PM] Bannon (?): Did you watch Chernobyl yet??? [06/18/19 12:31:11 PM] Bannon (?): Have you read 'in the closet of the Vatican ' yet [06/18/19 12:32:48 PM] Epstein: Yes no yes [06/18/19 12:33:21 PM] Epstein: June 26 for chernobyl [06/18/19 12:39:54 PM] Bannon (?): Dude-- I thought u were global player-- sean will get to u [06/18/19 12:39:57 PM] Bannon (?): Today [06/18/19 12:40:50 PM] Bannon (?): You are now exec producer of 'ITCOTV' [06/18/19 12:41:20 PM] Epstein: Porn
table of the most common email authors in the recent epstein files archive

replied to Molly White's status

A case against two brothers accused of exploiting Ethereum MEV bots collapsed into a mistrial after jurors were brought to tears. At first, I thought prosecutors might use the mistrial as an excuse to drop the charges, now that Trump has declared crypto enforcement off-limits.

But it seems prosecutors intend to re-try the case, demonstrating how Trump’s professed pro-crypto, anti-“regulation by enforcement” shift only seems to benefit the wealthy and well-connected. Cases against smaller crypto- and privacy-software developers, meanwhile, have continued unabated.

MEV bot brothers The prosecution of the two brothers who exploited MEV bots on Ethereum has ended in a mistrial. Jurors were subjected to a month-long, intensely technical crash course on Ethereum, maximal extractable value,b and the hordes of bots that execute automated trades on the network. Over three days of deliberations, jurors submitted eleven notes to the judge indicating that they were struggling to reach a verdict. In the final one, sent on the evening of Friday November 7, jurors wrote, “We held another vote. We are no closer to a unanimous decision. We are under stress. Yesterday some cried. Many have not slept. This is hardship.” The judge declared a mistrial, seeing no hope that the jury would reach a verdict the following Monday, and facing the risky possibility of having to proceed with only eleven jurors due to a scheduling conflict.c As crypto advocate Neeraj Agrawal wrote, “A group of every day Americans was forced to learn how Ethereum works and this was the result.”12 He’s right — sometimes that abyss stares back.
Despite its professed shift, the Trump-era DOJ has been erratic on crypto enforcement. In statements and in select cases — especially those involving wealthy, well-connected players — it has appeared lenient. It dropped an investigation into crypto prediction market platform Polymarket [I89]. It’s looking to settle a major tax evasion case against Roger Ver, a wealthy crypto investor who in January published a video plea to Trump for leniency, complete with waving flags, a dramatized enactment of Ver being arrested, and Ver insisting “I am an American, and I will die an American” (Ver renounced his US citizenship in 2014 in hopes of avoiding taxes on his crypto gains, though he now says it was to escape “lawfare” from the US government) [I57, 91, 95]. The department has also said it won’t prosecute developers who write crypto software “without ill-intent” even if they fail to register as money transmitters.13 And Trump himself rebuked the Biden-era DOJ by pardoning Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, framing relief for a man alleged to have deliberately evaded US regulations to profit from American customers as a stand against a “war on crypto”.
I originally wondered if the mistrial might give the prosecutors an easy excuse to drop the case. In addition to being highly technical and challenging to explain to a jury, there are genuine questions around whether the brothers were defrauding bot operators who in turn were making automated trades that often disadvantage humans they’re trading against or if they were simply out-trading those bots in a largely lawless ecosystem where it’s expected there will be winners and losers. But the original charges were brought in 2024, by a Biden-era Justice Department from which Trump’s DOJ has been eager to distance itself — particularly when it comes to crypto-related cases. An April 2025 memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche condemned the Biden-era DOJ’s approach to crypto, deeming it a “reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed”. In the memo, he outlined new DOJ priorities aligned with Trump’s directive to support the crypto industry, dismantled the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, and directed the Criminal Division’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to halt cryptocurrency enforcement [I81].
Screenshot: January 26, 2025 tweet by Roger Ver: “Mr. President, I am an American, and I need your help. Only you, with your commitment to justice, can save me @realDonald Trump”. Below is a video, paused on a frame with Ver staring off into the distance, with a waving American flag superimposed atop But simultaneously, the Justice Department has continued to aggressively prosecute Roman Storm, a developer of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixing software who received a mixed verdict in his August trial [I90]. The agency recently pursued the maximum sentence against the developers of Samourai Wallet, another crypto mixing service [I96]. And now, rather than dropping the charges, prosecutors have asked for a new trial date to take another swing at convicting the MEV brothers, who face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

replied to Molly White's status

Trump has announced a partnership with a Saudi firm to create a new Trump hotel in the Maldives. He plans to fund it by “tokeniz[ing] the development phase” and selling the tokens to US retail crypto traders.

Under any pre-Trump SEC, the tokenized hotel development would likely be considered a securities offering, with risk disclosures and protections aimed at keeping everyday people from being fleeced. But Trump’s SEC picks seem more occupied with advancing his crypto ambitions.

The hotel project is being developed with Saudi partners, making it another arrangement that boosts Trump’s crypto ventures while White House actions benefit the same government. The hotel announcement landed the same day Trump approved selling F-35s to Saudi Arabia.

The project is being developed with the Saudi company Dar Global, continuing the now-familiar pattern of lucrative Trump administration and family deals with Persian Gulf governments and companies. Congressional and public outcry over apparent corruption and ethics violations involving a $2 billion UAE investment in Binance denominated in the Trump family’s stablecoin (which would route tens of millions in interest on the reserves to the Trumps) [I83], a White House–brokered AI-chips deal with the UAE [I93], and another White House deal granting the UAE a 15% stake in TikTok [I94] evidently have not slowed Trump’s pursuit of similar arrangements.
Trump business interests Newest on President Trump’s rapidly expanding list of crypto ventures is a Trump-branded hotel and resort in the Maldives, which the Trump Organization says will be financed by “tokenizing” the project’s construction phase on a blockchain and selling the tokens to US retail investors.34 The Trump sons and some of their crypto business partners have lately been eagerly pitching the idea of new projects involving both real estate and blockchains [I94], which they present as an opportunity for retail investors who they claim have been unfairly excluded from high-risk real estate investments — rather than what it plainly is: an opportunity for Trump to start bilking everyday people as well as institutional lenders, contractors, and laborers.
The Trump Organization’s announcement came the same day that President Trump announced the US would sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, after the country’s leadership appealed to him personally. The move angered Israel, given the potential to shift the region’s military balance, and it stoked fears among US military intelligence officials that the UAE would share the technology with China. The sales will still need to be approved by Congress.5
Details of the tokenization scheme are scarce. The Trump Organization has not said whether buyers will receive any share of resort revenues, or indeed any benefits at all. But its statement that the project “tokenizes the development phase itself, offering investors the opportunity to participate in a high-growth, premium real estate project from inception” reads like a textbook securities offering under any pre‑Trump SEC. After all, the Howey test — the test to determine if an instrument qualifies as an investment contract under federal securities laws — involved a 1946 case in which a Florida company developed their orange farming operation by selling real-estate contracts to investors without agricultural knowledge or experience, with a promise that the company would farm the groves and generate profits on investors’ behalf. Image: A rendering of a teardrop-shaped platform floating on the sea, about 1/3 of which is an indoor hotel area, and the remainder of which is a pool and deck area.