Molly White
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Molly White
@molly.wiki
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independent writer of citationneeded.news and @web3isgoinggreat.com • tech researcher and cryptocurrency industry critic • software engineer • wikipedian

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molly.wiki
Added note: the Trump family is *heavily* connected to DATCOs. In an August newsletter I outlined the 5–6 DATCOs linked to the Trump family. Since then, Trump-linked World Liberty Financial and Fight Fight Fight LLC have also launched treasury strategies, bringing the total to 7–8.
This will be either the fifth or sixth Trump family-owned or -linked crypto treasury company, in addition to American Bitcoin,a Trump Media & Technology Group (which itself acquired a substantial bitcoin treasury earlier this month [I90]),b Metaplanet,c and ALT5 Sigma.d Donald Trump Jr. was previously a major shareholder in Thumzup Media;e he sold some or all of his shares,7 though some crypto news outlets continue to describe him as involved with the company.8
November 25, 2025 at 4:42 PM
molly.wiki
As crypto has become more entangled with traditional finance, the effects of a crypto market crash are more likely to impact the broader financial world. In December 2024, MicroStrategy joined the NASDAQ 100 [I72], and some other indexes have also begun to include various DATCOs.a As DATCO prices falter, they can tug on those indexes, and the funds that track them — some of which are widely held by investors who may not even realize they have exposure to the crypto world.
November 25, 2025 at 4:29 PM
molly.wiki
This is a scary trend. If crypto prices don’t rebound, DATCOs could be forced to sell their crypto, dragging the market down even further. Galaxy Digital researchers have compared the model, and its potential unwind, to the 1920s investment trust boom and bust.
This is a scary trend, particularly for traders holding shares in firms that have relied on debt to accumulate their crypto hoards. If crypto prices fail to rally before that debt comes due, the firms could be forced to sell their crypto. Large forced sales, or forced sales across many DATCOs, can depress prices further, only exacerbating the problem. Researchers with Galaxy Digital have compared the potential “unwind” to the busting of the 1920s investment trust boom, writing:12 The 1920s investment trust boom followed a similar reflexive loop. 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.
November 25, 2025 at 4:21 PM
molly.wiki
But with two months of sinking crypto prices, DATCOs are faltering. Some have even begun to sell their crypto to try to rescue plunging stock prices.
Now, with two months of sinking crypto prices, some of these firms are beginning to look pretty shaky, and the warnings from Chanos and others seem prescient. Many DATCOs have flipped from trading at a premium to a discount, meaning shares trade for less than the value of the underlying digital asset. Nakamoto, a bitcoin treasury company that merged with the publicly traded KindlyMD earlier this year, has cratered by 98%. BitMine is down 77% since adopting its DAT strategy this past summer. The OG, MicroStrategy, is down 60%. (Nakamoto and BitMine are trading at a discount to the value of their treasury holdings; MicroStrategy still trades at a premium, though it has been narrowing.) ETHZilla, which up until August was a pharmaceutical research firm called 180 Life Sciences, sold around $40 million of its ETH treasury to try to bolster its plunging stock price.9 FG Nexus, which also launched an ETH treasury strategy only months ago, has sold nearly $33 million of its holdings for the same purpose.10 Sequans, a semiconductor company that established a bitcoin treasury in June, sold $100 million of its bitcoin to pay down its debt.11
November 25, 2025 at 4:21 PM
molly.wiki
tech companies continually learning people don't want these things
Posters advocating Worldcoin eyeball-scanning orbs coming to San Francisco. They've been graffitied with orange spray paint: "Orwell was right" "Smash the orbs"
November 24, 2025 at 12:08 AM
molly.wiki
congratulations everyone. having met our "enough Internet for the day" quotas within moments of logging on, we're all free now
A cup of coffee, a print book, a pair of glasses, and various notetaking supplies
November 22, 2025 at 3:36 PM
molly.wiki
Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide quote: "Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience members died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth." "Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings" has been superimposed with "Robert F Kennedy Jr"
November 22, 2025 at 2:15 PM
molly.wiki
always have been! it's just in the emails though
Issue 97 – This is h... Thanks for paying for your subscription to this newsletter. You are the wind beneath my wings.
November 20, 2025 at 3:24 AM
molly.wiki
i love writing about crypto crime because these dudes do this constantly
Ahmed allegedly made the following search queries: embezzled defi hacks fbi defi hacks prosecution wire fraud how to prove malicious intent evidence laundering can I cross border with crypto how to stop federal government from seizing assets buying citizenship Criminal mastermind. However, the brothers' Google search history in the weeks after the theft for phrases including "how to wash crypto”, “top crypto lawyers”, “wire fraud statute / wire fraud statue [sic] of limitations”, and “prison or jail worse” suggest that perhaps the brothers had some clue that their actions could be interpreted criminally, as do the brothers' own descriptions of their plan as “sus”. Prosecutors, on the other hand, have pointed to his decision to buy a plane ticket out of the country the very next day, and to his Google searches for terms including "market manipulation criminal elements" and "FBI surveillance", as evidence that he knew quite well his actions were not merely "highly profitable trades".
November 20, 2025 at 3:19 AM
molly.wiki
I do have to admire him a little bit for incinerating $2 million across Ripple and the Winklevoss twins last go-around
John Deaton $2,052,433 in total other support from companies and individuals $1,000,000.00 from Ripple Labs Inc via Commonwealth Unity Fund $516,644.30 from Tyler Winklevoss via Commonwealth Unity Fund and John Deaton for Senate Inc. $515,850.99 from Cameron Winklevoss via Commonwealth Unity Fund and John Deaton for Senate Inc. $6,600.00 from Stuart Alderoty via John Deaton for Senate Inc. $6,600.00 from Chris Larsen via John Deaton for Senate Inc. $3,437.81 from Jesse Powell via John Deaton for Senate Inc. $3,300.00 from Kristin Smith via John Deaton for Senate Inc.
November 19, 2025 at 10:43 PM
molly.wiki
Pro-crypto candidate John Deaton, the Republican who lost to Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) by nearly 20 points in 2024, now wants to challenge Ed Markey in 2026. He believes he can win if he can secure support from crypto super PACs and their nine-figure war chests.
Republican crypto advocate John Deaton is taking another swing in Massachusetts, despite a near 20-point loss to Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2024. Although a handful of crypto industry executives spoke supportively of Deaton or contributed to his campaign, the major crypto super PACs stuck to a back-the-winners strategy and steered clear of his longshot race. Now Deaton will challenge three-term Senator Ed Markey, and says he hopes this time around he’ll earn the backing of crypto’s big super PACs.19
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
A crypto advocacy group project called State Network is looking to broaden the industry’s influence on state and local elections in the US. “We want every lawmaker from Congress down to your local school board to be pro crypto,” said Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone.
In elections and political influence The Digital Chamber crypto advocacy group has announced a new project called the State Network, through which they hope to push for state- and local-level pro-crypto policies. While crypto political spending during the 2024 elections was heavily focused on congressional and presidential races, the State Network plans to work to influence much more local races. “We want every lawmaker from Congress down to your local school board to be pro crypto,” said Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone.18 Someone may wish to break the news to him that school boards don’t write laws.
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
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.
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”. 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.
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
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 the Trump administration has declared crypto enforcement off-limits.
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. 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].
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
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. 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
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
Under any pre-Trump SEC, the tokenized hotel development would likely be considered a securities offering, with limits on retail sales, 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.
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.
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
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.
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. 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.
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
Crypto prices have slumped for two months, erasing the “Trump pump” that pushed bitcoin above the $100,000 mark. Some are worried this is the beginning of the next bust in a market defined by its often catastrophic boom-and-bust cycles.
Bitcoin has fallen back below $100,000, wiping out much of the “Trump pump” gains over the past year. After a two-month slide, some fear this is the beginning of another bust in a market defined by its often catastrophic boom-and-bust cycles. With heavy leverage across crypto trading and misconduct that often stays hidden until falling prices apply pressure, collapses can be swift and brutal — as 2021–2022 illustrated — and some traders worry we’re due for a repeat. On November 3, the major defi protocol Balancer suffered a $110 million exploit, which also affected some protocols that reused Balancer code. Then, a $93 million collapse of the Stream Finance yield platform the following day led to $285 million (that we know of so far) in contagion across the crypto ecosystem, including to projects like Elixir’s deUSD algorithmic stablecoin.1 The aftershocks of these defi failures, combined with faltering crypto prices and extremely jittery macroeconomic conditions, are already leading to wider fallout. On November 17, the tracking platform DappRadar announced it will shut down after seven years, calling the business “financially unsustainable in the current environment.”2 The rout has dragged down stock prices across crypto firms like Circle, Coinbase, and Gemini.a Shares of digital asset treasury companies — a big trend earlier this year, in which publicly traded firms with core businesses unrelated to crypto pivoted to amassing large crypto treasuries — have been sliding for even longer. MicroStrategy (now just “Strategy”) is down 50% since the summer. Nakamoto, the bitcoin treasury vehicle led by Trump ally David Bailey, has cratered more than 95% since its August merger with the healthcare company KindlyMD. It’s too soon to tell whether this slide is just the beginning of another crypto apocalypse, or if it’s just routine crypto volatility. Either way, I’ll be here to chronicle it — except for my scheduled hiatus beginning November 26. If history is any guide, that’s exactly when the market will choose chaos.
November 19, 2025 at 10:18 PM
molly.wiki
that’s an unfortunate Google snippet
Google search result titled: “FBI Records: The Vault – Jeffrey Epstein”. Snippet text: “Get a Job! FBI Fun and Games! Personal tools. Log in • Mail Image Get FBI ...”
November 18, 2025 at 8:31 PM
molly.wiki
i thought this scam DM was thought provoking. my first thought was that place that sells "alien jerky" out west
November 13, 2025 at 7:37 PM
molly.wiki
huh
HTTP response: net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_ORB "Pondering my orb" meme:
November 10, 2025 at 11:48 PM
molly.wiki
thanks Google AI!
AI Overview: "Cote" is pronounced "coat" in English, but the French pronunciation is "coat".
November 7, 2025 at 11:50 PM
molly.wiki
Days after one of these banking groups submitted their letter with a list of all of Coinbase’s regulatory violations in the US and Europe over the last five years, Coinbase was fined $25 million in Ireland for transaction monitoring failures.
The Central Bank of Ireland has fined Coinbase €21.5 million (~$24.9 million) for failures in its anti-money laundering and counterterrorism transaction monitoring programs from 2021 to 2025. Coinbase Europe has been fined due to faults in the configuration of their transaction monitoring system, which resulted in more than 30 million transactions not being properly monitored over a 12-month period. The value of these transactions amounted to over €176 billion, and accounted for approximately 31% of all Coinbase Europe transactions conducted in the period when the faults existed. Further, it took Coinbase Europe almost three years to fully complete the monitoring of the impacted transactions. This subsequent monitoring led to the reporting of 2,708 [Suspicious Transaction Report]s to the FIU for further analysis and potential investigation. The STRs submitted in respect of the late monitoring of the transactions contained suspicions associated with serious criminal activities including: money laundering; fraud/scams; drug trafficking; cyber-attacks (malware/ransomware); and child sexual exploitation. Coinbase Europe had outsourced its transaction monitoring to Coinbase Inc., its American counterpart.17
November 7, 2025 at 7:21 PM
molly.wiki
Coinbase is facing some opposition from banking groups over its national trust bank charter application. “This Application fails to meet statutory chartering standards, presents compounding safety and soundness risks, and would set a dangerous precedent for the structure of the U.S. banking system.”
Meanwhile, Coinbase is facing some opposition from banks over its application for a national trust bank charter [I95]. The Independent Community Bankers of America, the main trade group for community banks, submitted a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency expressing their position that the Coinbase National Trust Company has “demonstrably flawed risk and control functions while operating under a governance structure that prevents independent oversight” and “would struggle to achieve and maintain profitability during crypto bear markets, the very time at which the similarly concentrated Coinbase would be least able to provide support”. They also write that “The OCC’s untested receivership framework would struggle to resolve an uninsured institution of CNTC’s proposed scale and operational complexity, particularly given the technical challenges of crypto custody and CNTC’s likely importance as a dominant crypto ETF custodian.” The letter cites multiple recent enforcement actions by US and UK regulators against the Coinbase and the company’s May 2025 disclosure of a major cybersecurity breach [I84] as evidence of “a continuous pattern of compliance and operational failures. Indeed, over the past five years, Coinbase has never had a year without being subject to an enforcement action, spanning multiple jurisdictions (US, UK) and regulatory domains (BSA/AML, licensing, market integrity).” (Another enforcement action against Coinbase in Ireland, which I will describe in a moment, was announced several days after this letter, and so was not included.) They conclude that “This Application fails to meet statutory chartering standards, presents compounding safety and soundness risks, and would set a dangerous precedent for the structure of the U.S. banking system.”11 The Bank Policy Institute also submitted a letter in opposition, writing that “we have deep concerns that approval of the Application, whether alone or in conjunction with the similar applications recently filed, would: (i) exceed the scope of the OCC’s authority ...; (ii) permit the national trust bank charter to be used in a new and untested manner that could significantly increase risks to the U.S. financial system; and (iii) create an unlevel playing field that would harm traditional federal- and state-chartered banks and inhibit their ability to serve the credit needs of their communities.”12 The BPI also recently submitted letters opposing national trust company charter applications by Ripple, Circle, Paxos, National Digital Trust Company, and Wise, warning “endorsing this pathway and allowing firms to choose a lighter regulatory touch while offering bank-like products could blur the statutory boundary of what it means to be a ‘bank,’ heighten systemic risk and undermine the credibility of the national banking charter itself.”13 Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, was furious at the ICBA’s submission, writing on Twitter, “Imagine opposing a regulated trust charter because you prefer crypto to stay … unregulated. That’s ICBA’s position. It’s another case of bank lobbyists trying to dig regulatory moats to protect their own. From undoing a law to go after rewards to blocking charters, protectionism isn’t consumer protection.”14 His statement was met with mixed responses, with some agreeing with his claim that traditional banks were seeking to exclude competitors. Others were more skeptical. “Imagine approving an application that fails to meet statutory chartering standards so that your latest DeFi scamcoin has some air of legitimacy,” replied one commenter.15 “Says the co[mpany] encouraging clients to take on 10x-50x leverage. ‘Trust me, bro.’” wrote another.16
November 7, 2025 at 7:21 PM
molly.wiki
The crypto-focused Custodia Bank has lost its appeal of a 2024 court ruling that found that the firm was not entitled to a Federal Reserve master account. “We reject Custodia’s attempt to impair the Fed’s ability to safeguard our nation’s financial system”, wrote the judges.
In regulators Custodia Bank has lost its appeal of a 2024 court ruling that found that the firm was not entitled to a Federal Reserve master account. In the original decision, Judge Scott Skavdahl opined, “If Custodia’s position was correct, it would effectively mean that every depository institution chartered under the laws of a state, regardless of how soundly crafted, is entitled to a master account allowing it direct access to the federal financial system.” [I54]. This decision was affirmed in a 2–1 opinion in the Tenth Circuit, which concluded, “the plain language of the relevant statutes grants Federal Reserve Banks discretion to reject master account access requests from eligible entities and, therefore, we reject Custodia’s attempt to impair the Fed’s ability to safeguard our nation’s financial system through the exercise of discretion to reject master account access.”9 Custodia has nevertheless celebrated that one judge disagreed with the conclusion, and has claimed that there is a circuit split that could qualify them for rehearing.10
November 7, 2025 at 7:21 PM