Senate Democrats are demanding changes to cryptocurrency legislation pending in Congress, responding partly to growing evidence that the Trump family is using its connections and President Trump’s power to profit from crypto trading. The pushback intensified late last week after a closed-door meeting among Senate Democrats in which Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, told
French prosecutors said on Monday that the police had arrested seven people over the weekend in connection with the kidnapping of the father of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, adding that the captive had been freed. In a statement, the Paris prosecutor’s office said it had been informed on Thursday that a man had been kidnapped in
The pitch from “ZMoney” arrived on the encrypted messaging app Signal just days before Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration. “ZMoney” was Zachary Folkman, an entrepreneur who once ran a company called Date Hotter Girls and was now representing World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm that Mr. Trump and his sons had recently unveiled. Mr. Folkman
Last month, Paolo Ardoino, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency company Tether, joined business executives and U.S. lawmakers for a private lunch at the Willard, a luxury hotel near the White House. For years, Tether had faced accusations that it lied about its finances and allowed crime to flourish on its platform. But at the
A quiet honor student who had recently graduated from Immaculate High School in Danbury, Veer Chetal was about to begin studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 2022, he completed a “future lawyers” program, and a story that year on the Immaculate website showed a photo of a smiling kid with glasses wearing a
At the end of a three-hour hearing last month, Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, sided with a group of Republicans in a hotly contested debate. He voted to advance the GENIUS Act, a bill backed by the cryptocurrency industry. “It’s clear that digital assets are here to stay,” Mr. Gallego said after the Senate
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. NAKAMOTO: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto, by Benjamin Wallace A few years ago, I met up for coffee in Miami Beach with a person named Keith Rabois. Along with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Rabois is a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia — the group that
At a backyard barbecue in San Pedro, Argentina, last May, Rafael Flaiman spotted a friend wearing a light blue blazer that looked a little too snazzy for the occasion. He needled the guy a bit. What’s with the jacket? Mr. Flaiman asked. “La China pays,” the friend replied, with a triumphant smile. La China? Mr.
World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company started by Donald J. Trump and his sons, announced on Tuesday that it was planning to sell a digital currency called a stablecoin, deepening the president’s financial ties to crypto as his administration relaxes enforcement of the industry. The stablecoin would be known as USD1, the company wrote in
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create a national stockpile of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, an audacious idea that has been widely criticized as a scheme to enrich crypto investors. The basis of the stockpile will be a stash of Bitcoin, estimated to be worth as much as $17 billion, that