Brutkey

Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

The Paxos stablecoin issuer paid $48.5 million to settle with New York state financial regulators over insufficient anti-money laundering and due diligence. Days later, they applied for a national trust bank charter to become more enmeshed with the banking system.

In regulators The New York State Department of Financial Services and stablecoin issuer Paxos have agreed to a $48.5 million settlement after the regulator accused Paxos of insufficient anti-money laundering controls and due diligence failures in its former partnership with Binance to issue the BUSD stablecoin. The NYDFS alleged that Paxos didn’t have a sufficient monitoring program to detect “significant illicit activity occurring at or through Binance”, including transactions from US customers accessing the exchange despite prohibitions, and transactions with sanctioned entities. The NYDFS also claimed that, outside of the Binance partnership, Paxos’ insufficient compliance programs allowed customers to open multiple accounts and engage in potentially illicit coordinated activity, failed to detect “obvious patterns of money laundering”, and poorly defined when to open investigations based on law enforcement requests. $26.5 million of the settlement is a penalty paid to the state, and the remaining $22 million will go to compliance improvements.12 Only days after the settlement, Paxos joined Ripple, Circle, and other cryptocurrency companies in applying for a national trust bank charter, which would put the firm under federal OCC supervision and more closely integrate it into the traditional financial system.13 Crypto-friendly regulators are being installed at various federal agencies, including former blockchain executive and newly confirmed Comptroller of the Currency John Gould [I88]. Paxos and other crypto firms, in seeking these charters, may be hoping to reduce their exposure to state regulators — particularly in places like New York — that have continued to police crypto company abuses, and instead operate primarily under more permissive federal oversight.
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Trump’s nominee for CFTC Chair, Andreessen Horowitz’s Brian Quintenz, is facing scrutiny for emails seeking confidential information from the agency that could present a conflict of interest as a shareholder and board member of the Kalshi prediction market platform.

Crypto’s Winklevoss twins have also been privately pressuring Trump to rescind the nomination, after deciding Quintenz is insufficiently Trump-aligned. They also dislike that he suggested the CFTC should receive more funding if its mandate is expanded to oversee the crypto industry.

CFTC Trump’s nominee for CFTC chair, a former CFTC commissioner and current Head of Policy for Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm Brian Quintenz, is facing some opposition from Congress and, surprisingly enough, some in the crypto industry. His confirmation has dragged on longer than most of Trump’s appointees, and several scheduled confirmation hearing votes were canceled — most recently at the White House’s request, with no explanation. Quintenz is a shareholder and board member of the CFTC-regulated prediction market Kalshi, which has been heavily engaged with the CFTC over the past few years as it battled a lawsuit from the agency and sought new regulatory approvals [I66, 68, 76, 83]. On July 26, gambling consultant Dustin Gouker published excerpts of emails obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, suggesting Quintenz and intermediaries were seeking confidential information that could present conflicts of interest given his role at Kalshi.14 Representative Dina Titus (D-NV), co-chair of the Congressional Gaming Caucus, subsequently called for a CFTC investigation into Quintenz, writing:15 Since Mr. Quintenz’s nomination in February, the CFTC has taken several actions related to prediction markets that have impacted Kalshi and its competitors. This includes settling lawsuits with Kalshi, approving new prediction market platforms, and closing relevant investigations. ... I ask the CFTC to release all communications between the agency and Mr. Quintenz related to commission matters on prediction markets. This includes communications about Mr. Quintenz and agency decision-making, including attempts to direct individuals to communicate with Mr. Quintenz through his private email. I also ask for the disclosure of communications with Mr. Kevin Webb, Mr. Quintenz’s expected Chief of Staff, about the nominee’s involvement with agency decision-making before he has been confirmed. The Winklevoss twins, who run the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange and are now part of Trump’s inner circle of crypto donors, previously celebrated Quintenz’s nomination, with Cameron Winklevoss writing in February that Quintenz was “exactly the leader the CFTC needs.”16 Now, though, the twins are privately pressuring Trump to rescind his nomination, claiming Quintenz isn’t sufficiently Trump-aligned and won’t do enough to overhaul the CFTC to their specifications.17 The Winklevoss twins recently wrote to the CFTC Inspector General, months after Gemini reached a $5 million settlement with the agency, insisting that their company was “unreasonably and unfairly” targeted and demanding a “transformation” at the agency [I86]. A key issue, according to Politico, is that Quintenz suggested during a June confirmation hearing that the CFTC’s budget should increase if it takes on greater responsibilities in crypto regulation and enforcement.17 The CFTC has long been the crypto industry’s desired regulator, largely because it is smaller and more budget-constrained compared to the more aggressive SEC. While some, including Quintenz, argue that an expanded mandate should come with additional funding, the Winklevoss twins seem to hope the CFTC will be forced to do more with less, stretching the agency thinner and limiting its ability to energetically oversee and enforce crypto regulations. The Winklevosses also criticized Quintenz for remarks from his previous CFTC tenure, including those suggesting smart contract developers could be liable if they could reasonably foresee that their software might be used to violate CFTC regulations, and others the Winklevosses view as insufficiently opposed to central bank digital currencies. They also agreed that Quintenz’s FOIA-ed emails “raise serious questions”.18
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Crypto Council director Bo Hines has abruptly resigned, to be replaced by Patrick Witt. Like Hines, Witt’s qualifications seem to mostly involve playing college football and losing elections. Witt has also claimed in the past that he was passed over by the NFL because of a sexual assault accusation.

Bo Hines, former director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, abruptly announced his departure to return to the private sector. He will be replaced by his deputy, Patrick Witt. Like Hines, Witt’s qualifications also seem to involve playing college football and failing to be elected to Congress [I72] — though Witt spent time during the first Trump administration at the Office of Personnel Management, and then on Trump’s legal team fighting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.2728 Witt ran for office in 2022, with an aborted bid for the Republican nomination for Georgia’s 10th Congressional district and then an unsuccessful campaign to become the state’s Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner. He lost the Republican primary for the latter, despite a Trump endorsement and promises to “keep your insurance from going woke”.27 n 2012, Witt was the subject of a New York Times story after he claimed to have skipped a Rhodes scholarship interview to play in a football game against Harvard, drawing obsequious nationwide profiles for his “apparent choice of team fealty over individual honor”. According to the Times, he chose this story rather than admitting that the Rhodes Trust had rescinded his scholarship candidacy after learning he had been accused by an ex-girlfriend of sexual assault.29 In 2014, he penned an op-ed for the Boston Globe opposing a new sexual harassment policy at Harvard, where he was in his first year of law school. In the op-ed, he claimed the NFL passed him over because of the accusation, adding that he both did not know what the accusation was and that he was innocent of it.c Witt’s Globe op-ed was titled “A sexual harassment policy that nearly ruined my life”.30 I guess he couldn’t have known then that, a decade later, such an accusation would be practically a resume requirement for the Trump administration. c. Witt also claimed in the Globe op-ed that the Times had retracted their story; I could find no evidence of a retraction, and the story remains online. The Times’ public editor, Arthur S. Brisbane, did publish a secondary article questioning the use of anonymous sources in the original story, but wrote, “I’m not in a position to dispute The Times’s finding, although I think the story was handicapped by not having Mr. Witt’s version of the timeline.” (Brisbane also noted t
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has spent $30,000 over the past few months to lobby for a presidential pardon. The lobbyist he hired is also a lawyer for the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial company.

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is still hard at work trying to secure a pardon for his 2023 money laundering conviction. Zhao has personally spent $30,000 in the last few months on lobbying the president for “executive relief”, hiring BakerHostetler partner Teresa Goody Guillén (a former SEC lawyer from 2009–2011).31 Since March 24, Binance has also spent another $190,000 on Goody Guillén’s and other BakerHostetler lobbyists’ services to lobby Congress, the SEC, and the CFTC on “financial services policy issues relating to digital assets and cryptocurrency”.32 Goody Guillén simultaneously represents the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial project; she wrote the brief May retort from the company in response to Senator Blumenthal’s questions about Trump’s conflicts of interest [I83, 84].33
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

A fourth Trump family-connected crypto treasury company is in the works. This one will establish a treasury for WLFI, and the deal has provided the first “price” for the token. At this price, President Trump’s holdings are valued (on paper) at $3.15 billion.

The explosion in crypto treasury companies is making experts in and outside of crypto nervous. A crypto CEO described the “huge” risk based on assets that have “almost nothing backing [them]”. Crypto analysts at Galaxy have compared them to the 1920s investment trust collapse.

Trump business interests Trump’s World Liberty Financial has announced it will be jumping aboard the crypto treasury bandwagon — because apparently the Trumps need to be involved with a fourth.d Using the Nasdaq-listed ALT5 Sigma Corporation, they will set up a crypto treasury with World Liberty’s own WLFI token. ALT5 plans to sell 200,000 new shares to fund the purchase of $1.5 billion worth of WLFI tokens, and add Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial executives Zach Witkoff and Zak Folkman to its board. All three have a financial interest in World Liberty Financial, presenting a blatant conflict of interest in their roles on the ALT5 board. The deal provides the first valuation for the WLFI token, which cannot yet be resold, though the project just voted to allow secondary trading [I88]. Trump personally holds 15.75 billion WLFI tokens, suggesting a paper valuation of $3.15 billion.34 d. Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are part owners of the American Bitcoin mining and treasury company, and Eric is a co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer; the Trump majority-owned Trump Media & Technology Group just acquired a $2 billion bitcoin treasury; Eric Trump is on the board of the Metaplanet treasury company. Donald Trump Jr. also owned a large stake in the Thumzup Media treasury company, though he seems to have recently sold it.52 ↩ The glut of crypto treasury companies is continuing to draw concern [I86, 84]. Eric Benoist of the investment bank Natixis CIB told the Financial Times, “My main problem with this strategy is that I don’t really understand where it ends. The company is in a loop where it has to continually feed that loop with additional purchases, go back to the market to purchase more — this cycle has to continue to justify the premium.” Hmm, why is that description ringing a bell? And why is that bell a klaxon? Even crypto executives are getting uneasy. The FT quotes a crypto market maker CEO who told them, “You’re injecting a huge amount of risk into a system that, in the end, has almost nothing backing it except the continued appreciation of the asset.” Screenshot of I Think You Should Leave episode, where the focus group man states “Oh my God, he admit it!” A report by blockchain firm Galaxy Digital warns of structural risks from the proliferation of such companies: “When hundreds of firms adopt the same one-directional trade (raise equity, buy crypto, repeat), it can become structurally fragile. A downturn in any of these three variables (investor sentiment, crypto prices, and capital markets liquidity) can start to unravel the rest.” Though the report describes the risk as “largely theoretical” (“for now”), it compares the potential spiral to the 1920s investment trust crash:35 Trusts traded at premiums to NAV, issued shares, and used the proceeds to buy more assets. When sentiment turned, those same mechanics amplified the downside. Collapsing premiums choked off access to capital while leverage magnified losses on falling assets. These cascading failures were an accelerant of the 1929 crash and subsequent Great Depression. [Digital Asset Treasury Companies] may be more transparent and better regulated than 1920s trusts, but the mechanics of mNAV-driven capital formation are eerily similar.
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io
sexual assault

The Trumps’ World Liberty has invested in the Falcon Finance “synthetic stablecoin” project that recently depegged after concerns over dubious collateral. (“Synthetic stablecoin” is the new name for “algorithmic stablecoins”, an unpopular term since the Terra collapse.)

Falcon shares a founder with DWF Labs, a company that has also separately partnered with the Trumps’ World Liberty. DWF Labs’ managing partner Andrei Grachev is a convicted fraudster in Russia, and in April (a week before the DWF/WLF deal) tweeted jubilantly, “[it’s] crime szn bro”.

DWF Labs has separately faced multiple scandals, including allegations of pump-and-dumps and wash trading. Last fall, they fired a partner who was accused of drugging a job applicant and trying to coerce her into his hotel room.

DWF Labs and Falcon Finance World Liberty Financial has invested $10 million into Falcon Finance, creator of a “synthetic stablecoin” that recently depegged for several days after questions about potentially dubious collateral.36 (“Synthetic stablecoin” is the new term for “algorithmic stablecoin”, a phrase that fell out of favor after algostablecoins like Terra collapsed in multi-billion dollar fiascoes in 2022.) Falcon shares a co-founder with the Dubai-based DWF Labs, which purchased $25 million of WLFI tokens in April and announced plans to open a New York office. “Our visibility in the U.S. has been increased because of this deal,” said managing partner Andrei Grachev, explaining the decision to open the office. “We would like to have direct dialogue with the policymakers.”37 World Liberty Financial co-founder Zak Folkman described DWF Labs as a “partner” that would “help accelerate” World Liberty.38 DWF’s Grachev previously ran the Moscow branch of the Huobi (now HTX) crypto exchange, and has close ties to the Russian state-owned bank VEB. Before Huobi, Grachev was convicted of fraud in Russia after he set up a fake shipping firm; while on probation, he was accused of participating in multiple cryptocurrency scams.3940 Grachev resigned as Huobi Russia’s CEO in 2019 amid further scam allegations. DWF Labs, only a few years old, has itself been embroiled in scandal after scandal, including pump-and-dump allegations, wash trading allegations, and accusations that a firm partner drugged a female job applicant and tried to coerce her into his hotel room with promises of “inside information”. (DWF Labs denied the market manipulation allegations, and fired the partner accused of assault.)414239 In April, a week before DWF Labs’ WLFI purchase and office announcement, Grachev tweeted “it is a crime szn bro”, responding to a reply to another tweet where he wrote he was “enjoying [the] market nowadays, it is freaking volatile, real Wild Wild West”.43
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Justin Sun’s “Sundog” memecoin tweeted a meme depicting its mascot controlling puppet strings attached to the White House, with the caption “You never truly know who’s pulling the strings... 🤫🤫”

Sun has spent around $213 million on Trump-connected cryptocurrency ventures.

Justin Sun With his recent announcement of another $100 million purchase of $TRUMP memecoins, Justin Sun’s total contributions to Trump-connected cryptocurrency projects has come to around $213 million. On July 24, Sun’s “Sundog” memecoin, themed around a smirking corgi, posted a meme on Twitter depicting the mascot controlling puppet strings attached to the White House, with the caption “You never truly know who’s pulling the strings... 🤫” Tweet screenshot: SunDog @SUNDOG_TRX You never truly know who’s pulling the strings… 🤫 [AI-generated image of a corgi dog with a collar depicting the Tron logo, paws raised above the White House, with strings attached to the paws like a marionette] 2:30 AM Jul 24, 2025
Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

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