Tag: cryptocurrency

Crypto fund manager probed in the suspicious death of his fiancée in Zanzibar

According to an NBC News report, Zanzibar police investigating the death of Robinson confirmed she died by suicide following a “misunderstanding” between the couple.

Police confirmed the couple had been involved in a heated dispute before being separated twice by hotel staff and sent to separate rooms. However, police said Robinson’s death is still being investigated and have therefore withheld McCann’s passport, according to the news outlet.

Police have questioned McCann and have asked him to remain in the country while they receive the forensic results from Ashly’s autopsy.

The hotel said it was “deeply saddened” by what happened. “Our sincerest thoughts and sympathies go out to the family and loved ones during this painful time. We are providing our full cooperation to the local authorities and the U.S. Embassy,” the hotel said in a statement.

Robinson’s family, who said they doubt she died by suicide, have set up a GoFundMe page seeking to raise $50,000 to help with travel costs, arrangements and other unexpected expenses, they said. They have raised more than their target.

McCann, with an estimated net worth of $45 million, is a prominent figure in institutional crypto, leading Asymmetric, a hedge fund and venture firm backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.

However, in December, he announced he would shut down Asymmetric’s Liquid Alpha Fund following claims of massive financial losses throughout 2025. McCann’s decision to wind down the fund followed unconfirmed social media chatter that the liquid fund was down 78% this year.

Robinson and her fiancé, McCann, traveled to Zanzibar on April 4, according to a translated video statement from Tanzanian police.

CoinDesk called Zanzibar police several times, but the staff answering the phones immediately hung up, refusing to answer any questions. The Tanzania Police Force has also not responded to an email request for information.

The U.S. State Department said it had no further comment, only offering its condolences to the Robinson family.

“The Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, we have no further comment. For additional questions about any investigation, we refer you to local authorities. We offer our sincerest condolences to the family of Ms. Robinson and her loved ones on their loss.”

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Tether Freezes $344 Million USDT Stablecoins Flagged For Illicit Activity

Tether froze more than $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses on Thursday, in coordination with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), marking one of the stablecoin issuer’s largest compliance actions on record.

While Tether did not name the network of the frozen funds, blockchain security firm PeckShield identified the blacklisted addresses as TNiq9…QZH81 and TTiDL…pjSr9, holding approximately $213 million and $131 million respectively.

The action comes weeks after the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit; an incident that put the entire stablecoin industry under public scrutiny and drove hard questions about issuer’s crisis responses. Tether addressed the incident by proposing a $127.5 million recovery contribution. 

“USDT is not a safe haven for illicit activity,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, in a statement. “When credible links to sanctioned entities or criminal networks are identified, we act immediately and decisively. Recent events have shown what happens when platforms fail to move quickly, enforcement breaks down, users are exposed, and trust erodes.”

“Our approach is different,” he continued. “We combine blockchain transparency with real-time monitoring and direct coordination with law enforcement to stop funds before they can move. That’s a responsibility we take seriously as one of the largest issuers in the market.”

As Decrypt notes, the freeze underscores Tether’s expanding compliance infrastructure, which now encompasses partnerships with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries. The stablecoin issuer said it has supported over 2,300 cases globally and frozen more than $4.4 billion in assets overall—including $2.1 billion tied specifically to U.S. authorities.

Thursday’s action follows a pattern of large-scale Tether freezes coordinated with US authorities. In November 2023, the company froze about $225 million in USDT linked to a Southeast Asia human-trafficking and pig butchering scam investigation. In January 2026, Tether froze roughly $182 million across five Tron wallets in another action.

To date Tether has supported more than 2,000 cases globally, including over 1,050 tied to U.S. law enforcement, and has led to the freezing of more than $4 billion in assets, including over $1.9 billion connected to U.S. authorities. This latest action adds to a series of high-profile enforcement efforts in which Tether has supported U.S. and international authorities in tracing, freezing, and seizing funds tied to fraud, terrorism financing, and sanctions evasion.

These freezes typically involve the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. Treasury Department agency that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions. The increasing frequency and scale of such actions reflect both the growing use of stablecoins in illicit finance and Tether’s efforts to maintain regulatory compliance.

Tether’s latest action follows a pair of high-profile crypto project hacks that have been linked by investigators to North Korean hackers: the $285 million Drift Protocol attack, and $292 million Kelp DAO exploit. Tether’s biggest competitor, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle, faced criticism following the Drift Protocol hack for not taking action to freeze funds linked to the attack. The firm defended its inaction, saying that it can only freeze funds when identified by law enforcement or required through court orders.

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Billionaire entrepreneur Justin Sun sues Trump family’s crypto firm

Billionaire entrepreneur Justin Sun has sued the cryptocurrency platform co-founded by US President Donald Trump and his sons, accusing the company of fraud.
Mr Sun, a 35-year-old Chinese-born crypto mogul, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, US time, accusing World Liberty Financial of blocking him from selling his tokens after they became tradeable last year.

In the filing, Mr Sun claimed to have purchased $45 million worth of WLFI, an electronic currency launched by World Liberty Financial – founded by Donald, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump – in October 2024.

To thank him for the investment, which came at a time when WLFI was generating little initial interest, World Liberty Financial appointed him as an adviser and awarded him an additional one billion WLFI tokens, the lawsuit states.

Sales to investors subsequently accelerated, and in March 2025, World Liberty Financial announced that it had sold $550 million worth of the digital currency.

WLFI became tradeable on September 1, 2025.

Its value has since plummeted from 46 cents per unit to its current price of eight cents.

Mr Sun, the founder of another cryptocurrency platform TRON, claims his WLFI assets were unilaterally frozen by World Liberty Financial and he has been unable to resell any of them to date. He alleges platform executives even threatened to destroy his holdings if he attempted to take legal action.

“I have always been — and remain — an ardent supporter of President Trump and his Administration’s efforts to make America crypto friendly. This lawsuit does not change how I feel about President Trump or the Trump Administration,” he wrote in a post on social media.

“Unfortunately, certain individuals on the World Liberty project team have been operating the project in a manner that goes against President Trump’s values. They wrongfully froze all of my tokens, stripped me of my right to vote on governance proposals, and have threatened to permanently destroy my tokens by “burning” them — all without any proper justification.”

Mr Sun is demanding the unfreezing of his assets as well as compensatory damages for the harm he has suffered.

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Regulation by hostility: the real legacy of Biden-era crypto policy

Thorn argues that a recent New York Times op-ed rewrites history through omission, glossing over the collateral damage caused by the previous administration.

Former Biden economic advisers Ryan Cummings and Jared Bernstein would have you believe the decline in bitcoin’s price from its 2025 peak somehow vindicates their administration’s approach to cryptocurrency. A masterclass in selective memory, their February 26 New York Times opinion piece omits the most consequential fact about Biden-era crypto policy: it was not a reasoned regulatory framework.

The authors credit the Biden administration with “increasingly aggressive regulatory efforts to curb scams and fraud.” This framing is extraordinary, given what happened on their watch. FTX grew to enormous scale during the Biden administration. Sam Bankman-Fried was a top Democratic donor and met with senior administration officials (including then-Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler) while running what became one of the largest financial frauds in history.

The administration’s strategy of regulation-by-enforcement, rather than establishing clear rules, had a perverse effect: legitimate, compliance-minded companies were driven offshore or out of business, consumers were harmed, and American innovation was stifled. Meanwhile, bad actors like Bankman-Fried (who knew how to play political games) thrived in the confusion. When you refuse to write clear rules, the only people who benefit are those who never intended to follow them.

The authors conveniently ignore one of the most troubling episodes of the Biden era: “Operation Choke Point 2.0.” Under pressure from federal regulators, banks systematically debanked lawful crypto businesses, cutting them off from the financial system without due process, formal rulemaking, or legislative authority. The debanking campaign swept up ordinary individuals and small businesses who had turned to crypto because the traditional banking system had long underserved them. The Biden administration’s approach cut consumers off from tools they were using to participate in the financial system, without putting a single policy through the democratic process of notice-and-comment rulemaking.

The authors dismiss crypto as a “painfully slow and expensive database” with “almost no practical use.” They acknowledge in passing that crypto is used to wire money

internationally, but wave this away as though enabling fast, low-cost cross-border remittances for millions of people is a trivial achievement.

It is not. Global remittance fees average nearly 6.5%, costing migrant workers and their families billions of dollars each year. Stablecoins running on blockchain networks can execute the same transfers in minutes for a fraction of the cost. This is an immediate, material financial improvement for families in developing countries. The Biden economists sat in “dozens of meetings” and apparently came away unimpressed. One wonders whether they spoke to any of the people these tools serve.

Beyond remittances, blockchain technology underpins a rapidly growing ecosystem of financial applications. Fidelity, JPMorgan, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, Visa, Mastercard, Meta, Stripe, Block Inc. and Franklin Templeton are actively building on blockchain infrastructure. The Biden economists’ claim that no “giant tech firms” are using this technology is flatly wrong.

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Trump’s World Liberty Financial uses five billion WLFI to borrow $75 million from a platform its adviser co-founded

World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by the Trump family, has executed a series of transactions through decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Dolomite that raises questions about insider access, circular token economics, and concentrated risk to other depositors.

Onchain records analyzed by CoinDesk, sourced from Etherscan, Arkham and publicly accessible wallet data, show the sequence began on Feb. 8, when WLFI’s treasury deposited 14 million USD1, its own dollar-pegged stablecoin, into Dolomite as collateral and borrowed 11.4 million USDC against it.

Minutes later, 11.45 million USDC moved to a Coinbase Prime deposit address, per Arkham. Two days later, 12.5 million USD1 was sent from the treasury to a separate Coinbase Prime deposit address. Coinbase Prime is typically used for converting crypto to fiat or for institutional OTC trading.

That 12.5 million USD1 was not borrowed from Dolomite. It moved directly from WLFI’s treasury wallet to the exchange, meaning the venture sent its own stablecoin straight to a fiat off-ramp.

But the WLFI token entered the picture twelve days later. On Feb. 20, the treasury deposited 890 million WLFI into Dolomite and borrowed 20 million USD1 against it.

On March 24, another 1.1 billion WLFI followed. In total, 1.99 billion WLFI tokens now sit as collateral inside Dolomite, and the treasury has received roughly 31.4 million in stablecoins from the protocol across both episodes.

The choice of protocol is not incidental, however.

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As Epstein’s Clients Walk Free, an Innocent Man Rots in a Cage for Promoting Liberty

The glaring reality of the American justice system is not that it is broken, but that it functions exactly as intended to protect the elite while crushing the peaceful and creative. To see this in action, you need look no further than the fact that years after the most prolific child trafficking ring in history was exposed, not a single one of Jeffrey Epstein’s high-profile American clients has seen the inside of a jail cell.

Just look at the absolute theater surrounding the Epstein files. This administration actually campaigned on a platform of transparency, promising to finally expose this elite predator ring to the world. First, we were told the unredacted files were “on the desk,” ready for total declassification. Then, the narrative abruptly shifted. The administration claimed the files didn’t even exist, later dismissing the justifiable public outcry as nothing more than a “Democrat hoax.” When they finally did dump a batch of documents under immense pressure, it was a masterclass in state-sponsored cover-ups: tens of thousands of pages with the names of the biggest political and financial power players heavily redacted, or mysteriously scrubbed from the DOJ’s website overnight.

But the true sleight of hand happened next. Just as the heat on the Epstein cover-up was reaching a boiling point, the war drums began beating for Iran. It is no coincidence that the state escalated a catastrophic overseas conflict precisely when they needed a massive distraction from the predators operating within their own ranks. As I pointed out recently, Google trends data exposes this manipulation perfectly: the exact moment the media-manufactured interest in Iran skyrocketed, the public’s focus on the Epstein files flatlined. The political class effectively engineered a bloodbath to change the news cycle, and now, the trafficking network that serviced the world’s most powerful people has conveniently vanished from the headlines. We live in a world where government actors can orchestrate this kind of mass slaughter—like the horrifying reality of the state murdering over a hundred school girls in Iran—and absolutely no one faces justice. The politicians and enforcers responsible for these atrocities will never spend a fraction of a second behind bars, nor will they ever offer an apology for the blood on their hands.

Meanwhile, Ian Freeman, a man whose only so-called crime was facilitating voluntary cryptocurrency exchanges, sits rotting in a federal cage. The juxtaposition is sickening, but it perfectly illustrates the priorities of a ruling class that views individual liberty as a far greater threat than systemic predation and mass slaughter of children.

When a peaceful man in New Hampshire helps people bypass the fiat banking cartel using Bitcoin, the full force of the empire is brought down upon his head. Freeman’s conviction is a masterclass in prosecutorial overreach and judicial acrobatics. As we noted in a previous breakdown of this political imprisonment, he was effectively railroaded for supposedly conspiring to launder money with an undercover federal agent. Under well-established federal law, it is legally impossible to form a criminal conspiracy with a government agent, yet the First Circuit Court of Appeals enthusiastically upheld his eight-year sentence anyway when they officially denied his appeal. They threw an innocent man in a cage over regulatory infractions and the testimony of an IRS agent who admitted under oath that Freeman might actually owe nothing in taxes.

The financial destruction the state has leveled against him is just as absurd as the cage they put him in. In addition to his eight-year sentence, a federal judge ordered Freeman to pay over $3.5 million in restitution to victims of internet romance scams—scams carried out by third parties Freeman didn’t know and never colluded with. The government is literally criminalizing the act of not acting as a financial spy for the state, punishing Freeman for running a business that respected customer privacy by disabling surveillance features on his Bitcoin kiosks.

Fortunately, those who actually understand the concept of liberty haven’t forgotten him. Free Staters have been pursuing a concerted effort to demand a pardon for Freeman, pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of a system that selectively doles out clemency while burying whistleblowers and agorists. The push continues through platforms like FreeIanNow.org and the daily advocacy of his co-host, Mark Edge, on Free Talk Live.

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Elizabeth Warren Targets MrBeast: Sends 12-Page Letter Demanding Answers on Crypto Push to Children

Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced Thursday that she is investigating YouTube superstar MrBeast over his company’s recent move into cryptocurrency and financial services.

In a 12-page letter sent to Beast Industries, the company run by Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, Warren raised concerns about the firm’s February acquisition of the teen-focused banking app Step and its plans to offer crypto-related products.

Warren specifically questioned whether the company is marketing cryptocurrency investments to children, who make up a huge chunk of MrBeast’s audience.

Despite Step’s statements that any crypto activity by minors would require parent or guardian approval, Warren claimed the app had previously published materials encouraging kids to pressure their parents into crypto investments.

“I have questions for MrBeast,” Warren wrote in a post on X announcing the letter.

The Massachusetts senator, a longtime critic of the cryptocurrency industry, also pressed for details on Beast Industries’ banking partner, Evolve Bank & Trust. The bank has faced past enforcement actions from the Federal Reserve over deficiencies in its anti-money laundering programs.

“Beast Industries is primarily an entertainment and consumer product company — and any foray into financial services, particularly services aimed at children — must be done with great care and in compliance with the law,” Warren wrote in the letter.

Beast Industries responded to the inquiry in a statement to Mediaite, saying the acquisition was intended to help young people build better financial futures.

“Our primary motivation behind this deal is to improve the financial future of the next generation,” a company spokesman said. “Now that we’ve completed the transaction and have ownership control, we’re examining all existing offerings and marketing approaches to ensure that Step’s future is developed thoughtfully and deliberately, meets our very high quality standards, and is in compliance with applicable laws and regulatory requirements.”

The company added that it “appreciates Senator Warren’s outreach” and plans to engage with her office on the project going forward.

MrBeast is one of the largest YouTubers among younger viewers due to his high-production giveaways, challenges, and philanthropy videos.

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Federal contractor busted on ritzy Caribbean island for ‘stealing $46 million in crypto’ from US government

A government contractor accused of stealing $46 million in cryptocurrency from the US Marshals Service has been captured on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.

John Daghita, 21, was arrested following a joint operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and French authorities, FBI director Kash Patel announced Thursday.

A now-deleted LinkedIn account reportedly identified Daghita as working for Virginia-based contractor Command Services & Support, a firm owned by his father, Dean Daghita. 

Their work with the Marshals Service involved managing seized digital assets, which allegedly allowed Daghita to access private cryptocurrency accounts holding millions. 

Authorities have not elaborated on how the younger Daghita allegedly stole the huge fortune, with his alleged fraud dating back to late 2024. 

Patel announced the arrest on X sharing an image of a handcuffed Daghita wearing red sweatpants and flip flops as he was taken into custody next to a swimming pool. 

Patel also shared an image of a silver briefcase filled with hundred dollar bills and a number of hard drives.

‘The FBI will continue working 24/7 with our international partners to track down, apprehend, and bring to justice those who attempt to defraud American taxpayers – no matter where they try to hide,’ Patel wrote. 

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Jeffrey Epstein Recruited NSA Codebreakers for Genome “Manhattan Project”

In the decade before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. and Russia were engaged in high-stakes exchanges of advanced technology involving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Skolkovo Innovation Center—a Russian government-backed technology hub that aimed to jump-start a “venture” innovation ecosystem in Moscow.

Jeffrey Epstein sat at the crossroads of academia, philanthropy, and venture finance as these global capital flows were threatened by the brewing confrontation in Ukraine.

In 2013, during the early cryptocurrency boom, Epstein sought an audience with Vladimir Putin to encourage the Russian president to shift course from the MIT–Skolkovo model. Instead of playing “catch up” with the United States through venture-backed startups, Epstein proposed, Russia could help lead a new financial system based on a novel global currency.

Epstein funded the early development of cryptocurrency through the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, founded in 2015. MIT’s Bitcoin Core Development Fund helped pay bitcoin’s early developers to maintain the open-source software authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s anonymous inventor. Epstein was an early investor in Coinbase, and he was friends with Brock Pierce, the co-founder of U.S. dollar stablecoin company Tether, which operates, in effect, the world’s largest crypto bank.

Epstein was also recruiting cryptographers to a more ambitious project: hacking the human genome. In an email to a redacted recipient in August 2012, Epstein wrote, “My biology gurus at harvard all agree that the signal intelligence used by the various agencies , could be put to work on breaking the dna code or protein signal problems. breaking foreign codes is the expertise of the us and nsa.” Epstein prompted the recipient to help him recruit “code breakers” from the various intelligence agencies: “it would be great to know which agency button to push.”

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Trump family secretly signed $500m crypto deal with ‘spy sheikh’ who has been pushing for access to US intelligence

The Trump family quietly signed a $500 million cryptocurrency deal with a powerful Abu Dhabi royal just days before Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

A previously undisclosed agreement that sent nearly $200 million to Trump-linked entities and was followed months later by the US granting the same foreign power sweeping access to sensitive artificial intelligence technology.

The deal, involving Trump-backed crypto firm World Liberty Financial, was signed on January 16, 2025, by Eric Trump and executives tied to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and brother of the country’s president.

The previously undisclosed deal was confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, company documents and others familiar with the matter. 

The transaction made a foreign government official the largest shareholder in a company tied to the US president. The move is unprecedented in modern American politics, raising questions about conflicts of interest and the influence of foreign powers.

The buyer was Aryam Investment 1, a company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East. 

The agreement granted Aryam a 49 percent  ownership stake in World Liberty for $500 million – with $250 million paid immediately, and $187 million of that first installment directed to Trump family entities, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.

Tahnoon, who serves as the UAE’s national security adviser and oversees a sprawling business empire worth more than $1.3 trillion, has long been viewed with suspicion inside Washington’s intelligence and national security circles.

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