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Judge Punts on FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s Efforts to Dismiss Some Charges

A U.S. federal judge in New York revealed skepticism of the arguments from SBF’s defense attorneys in a hearing on their motions to dismiss several counts.

The judge overseeing Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial seemed skeptical of his efforts to dismiss some of the charges he faces.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asked the FTX founder’s defense team several questions about their motion to dismiss bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance charges, though he did not make a decision on the motions to dismiss during Thursday’s hearing.

“I’d like to congratulate you on an extraordinarily imaginative [defense],” the judge told one defense attorney who argued that the U.S. Department of Justice was trying to insert new legal theories into its prosecution.

Mark Cohen, another attorney for Bankman-Fried, argued before a packed courtroom that the campaign finance charge should be dismissed, or at least severed alongside other charges, on a technical detail.

“The operative document in extradition is the warrant of surrender,” Cohen said. “It does not list the campaign finance charge.”

Bankman-Fried never consented to be extradited on that charge, Cohen contended.

A prosecutor pushed back against this assertion later on, saying the U.S. had included the charge in its extradition request.

The warrant in question was addressed to Bahamian police, and while it may not have included the charge, the Bahamian court itself was aware of it, the prosecutor said.

Judge Kaplan seemed unconvinced. He seemed similarly skeptical about the defense’s efforts to dismiss bank and wire fraud charges.

Part of Thursday’s hearings focused on the possible timeline through the start of the criminal trial. While the DOJ shared a proposed timeline, the judge said it didn’t give him enough time to review all of the materials he’d have to look at.

The judge also denied a number of motions made by the defense tied to discovery, including an effort to have the DOJ review FTX documents and materials.

Bankman-Fried’s attorneys filed to dismiss most of the charges laid out against him last month, arguing that there were a number of different reasons to grant the motions. Several of the motions to dismiss focused on claimed legal issues, including failure to state an offence or allege valid property rights.

Bankman-Fried also sought to dismiss some charges brought after he was extradited to the U.S. on grounds that the Bahamas hadn’t consented to them.

Bankman-Fried was arrested last December on eight initial charges, but prosecutors have added another five through multiple superseding indictments. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys have argued that under the U.S.’s extradition treaty with the Bahamas, the Bahamas’ government needs to sign off on the charges brought post-extradition. On Tuesday, the Bahamas Supreme Court ruled that he should have an opportunity to argue against the country approving the additional charges.

Late Wednesday night, prosecutors agreed to hold off on these added charges until the Bahamas signed off.

Prosecutors pushed back against the other motions, saying the defense’s arguments didn’t carry enough weight on the procedural issues.

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Bitcoin Miners Gain Support From Texas With Two Bills Passed, One Halted

Two bills that seem to embrace mining have been sent to the governor, whereas one that would adversely affect miners was stopped at the committee stage.

Texas legislators are throwing their weight behind bitcoin mining with two bills passed in the latest legislative session that are signaling support for the industry — and one thwarted for the time being.

In the past few weeks, two bills — SB 1929 and HB 591 — that show support for miners have made it through the legislative stage and are awaiting Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature. If signed, they take effect on Sept. 1.

The bill SB 1929 requires miners whose energy capacity is larger than 75 megawatts (MW) to register with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of Texas as large loads operators, which then shares their data with the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator. The bill is in line with the March 2022 interim interconnection process formed by ERCOT’s Large Flexible Loads Taskforce, which is responsible for drafting policy to manage big electric loads such as bitcoin miners.

Meanwhile, HB 591 was sent to the governor on April 18, and will introduce tax exemptions from companies that put to use otherwise wasted gas, including data centers.

“These bills signal that Texas remains the jurisdiction of choice for bitcoin, blockchain, and digital assets,” said Lee Bratcher, president of local industry group Texas Blockchain Council (TBC).

The third bill, SB 1751 — dubbed by some the “anti bitcoin mining bill” and which would have capped the industry’s participation in cost-saving demand-response programs — was stopped at the committee stage. Demand-response programs are various schemes in which miners get power credits for curtailing their operations at times of peak energy demand.

State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, the bill’s lead sponsor did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment on this story.

“More miners in the [demand-response] program means more load can be reliably called on to help balance the grid,” said Dennis Porter, who leads another industry advocacy group, Satoshi Action Fund. “We are increasing communication with the PUC and ERCOT which will improve transparency and publicly available data on mining which ultimately is good for the industry,” he noted.

However, the opposition of SB 1751 isn’t what defeated it, said Jackie Sawicky, who has brought together hundreds of Texas residents in an activist group called Concerned Citizens of Navarro County. “The house just didn’t prioritize it and the session ended/ran out of time,” so the bill can be reintroduced in the next session, she said. The next session will start in January 2025.

Bill SB 1751 would have taken the threshold for registering with state grid authorities to 10 MW.

“Texas is setting a standard for how to adopt this new and innovative technology,” said Porter.

Texas innovation

Texas is one of the largest bitcoin mining hubs in the world due to cheap energy and friendly regulators. As policy on bitcoin mining at the federal level has lagged, the state, the largest by energy production in the U.S., is marching on with its own rules.

However, it’s not the only state that’s pro-mining. Legislation protecting mining was passed in Arkansas and Montana. Similar bills in Missouri and Mississippi have died.

By contrast, New York imposed a two-year moratorium on new fossil fuel-based bitcoin mines. Oregon is currently considering legislation that would require data centers, including miners, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, a 30% tax on bitcoin mining proposed by the Biden administration appears to have stalled. The tax didn’t make it into a bill on the debt ceiling, which passed on Wednesday. According to Rep. Warren Davidson, the tax will likely not return as part of the U.S. budget.

“With policy stagnation at the federal level, the states are stepping up to be the incubators of innovation,” TBC’s Bratcher said.

‘It makes you sad’: Tourists and fishermen leave Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay covered in trash

Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s most beautiful nature site. But the UNESCO world heritage site threatened by deluge of plastic waste.

Squinting in the bright light of a hot summer morning, Vu Thi Thinh perches on the edge of her small wooden boat and plucks a polystyrene block from the calm waters of Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay.

It’s not yet 9am, but a mound of styrofoam buoys, plastic bottles and beer cans sit behind her.

They are the most visible sign of the human impacts that have degraded the UNESCO World Heritage Site, famed for its brilliant turquoise waters dotted with towering rainforest-topped limestone islands.

“I feel very tired because I collect trash on the bay all day without much rest,” said Thinh, 50, who has been working for close to a decade as a trash picker.

“I have to make five to seven trips on the boat every day to collect it all.”

Waste threatens spectacular Ha Long Bay

Since the beginning of March, 10,000 cubic metres of rubbish – enough to fill four Olympic swimming pools – have been collected from the water, according to the Ha Long Bay management board.

The trash problem has been particularly acute over the past two months, as a scheme to replace styrofoam buoys at fish farms with more sustainable alternatives backfired and fishermen chucked their redundant polystyrene into the sea.

Authorities ordered 20 barges, eight boats and a team of dozens of people to launch a clean-up, state media said.

Do Tien Thanh, a conservationist at the Ha Long Bay Management Department, said the buoys were a short-term issue but admitted: “Ha Long Bay… is under pressure”.

More than seven million visitors came to visit the spectacular limestone karsts of Ha Long Bay, on Vietnam’s northeastern coast, in 2022.

Authorities hope that number will jump to eight and a half million this year.

But the site’s popularity, and the subsequent rapid growth of Ha Long City – which is now home to a cable car, amusement park, luxury hotels and thousands of new homes – have severely damaged its ecosystem.

Conservationists estimate there were originally around 234 types of coral in the bay. Now the number is around half.

There have been signs of recovery in the past decade, with coral coverage slowly increasing again and dolphins — pushed out of the bay a decade ago — coming back in small numbers, as a ban on fishing in the core parts of the heritage site expanded their food source.

But the waste, both plastic and human, is still a huge concern.

“There are so many big residential areas near Ha Long Bay,” said conservationist Thanh.

“The domestic waste from these areas, if not dealt with properly, greatly impacts the ecological system, which includes the coral reefs.

“Ha Long City can now handle just over 40 percent of its wastewater.”

Single-use plastic is now banned on tourist boats, and the Ha Long Bay management board says general plastic use on board is down 90 percent from its peak.

But trash generated onshore still lines parts of the beach, with a team of rubbish collectors not able to block the eyesore from tourists.

‘Plastic pollution crisis’ in Ha Long Bay

Pham Van Tu, a local resident and freelance tour guide, said he had received a lot of complaints from visitors.

“They read in the media that Ha Long Bay is beautiful, but when they saw a lot of floating trash, they didn’t want to swim or go canoeing and they hesitated to tell their friends and family to visit,” he said.

Rapid economic growth, urbanisation and changing lifestyles in communist Vietnam have led to a “plastic pollution crisis”, according to the World Bank.

A report in 2022 estimated 3.1 million tonnes of plastic waste are generated every year, with at least 10 per cent leaking into the waterways, making Vietnam one of the top five plastic polluters of the world’s oceans.

The volume of leakage could more than double by 2030, the World Bank warns.

Larissa Helfer, 21, who travelled to Vietnam from her home in Germany, said Ha Long Bay was beautiful but the trash problem would be one of her strongest memories of the trip.

“Normally you (might say) ‘Look at the view! Look at the fishing villages!” she told AFP.

But here “you have to talk about the trash, (you say) ‘oh god… look at the plastic bottles and things in the sea.’ And it makes you sad.”

Thinh, the trash collector, grew up in Ha Long and remembers a very different bay.

“It didn’t look so terrible,” she said.

“Of course, a lot of work makes me tired and irritated,” she admitted. “But we must do our work.”

Europe is home to the world’s heaviest drinkers. Which country drinks the most alcohol?

Among the 10 countries that drink the most in the world, nine are in the EU. But there are big differences between nations.

If you feel that Europeans drink a lot, your hunch is correct: people across the continent consume more alcohol than in any other part of the world.

Each year in Europe, every person aged 15 and over consumes, on average, 9.5 litres of pure alcohol, which is equivalent to around 190 litres of beer, 80 litres of wine or 24 litres of spirits.

That’s according to the 2021 European health report by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Total alcohol consumption per capita decreased by 2.5 litres (21 per cent) between 2000 and 2019 in the WHO European Region, which covers a vast geographical area of 53 countries including Russia and former Soviet states like Moldova.

But people continue to drink, especially in Western Europe. Out of the 10 countries that drink the most in the world (and adjusting for tourist consumption), nine are located in the European Union (EU).

In 2019, 8.4 per cent of the EU adult population (15 years or older) consumed alcohol every day, 28.8 per cent drank weekly, and 22.8 per cent monthly, while 26.2 per said they never consumed alcoholic drinks or hadn’t consumed any in the last 12 months.

Between EU countries, there are large differences in estimated alcohol consumption, but one trend remains prevalent: men drink more than women: 13.0 per cent of men vs. 4.1 per cent of women drink alcohol every day; 36.4 per cent of men vs. 21.7 per cent of women drink every week.

The largest gender drinking gaps are in Portugal (33.4 per cent of men drink daily vs. 9.7 per cent of women) and Spain (20.2 per cent vs. 6.1 per cent).

Which country drinks the most in Europe?

In 2019, the top 10 European countries with the highest alcohol consumption per capita were Czechia (14.3 litres), Latvia (13.2), Moldova (12.9), Germany (12.8), Lithuania (12.8), Ireland (12.7), Spain (12.7), Bulgaria (12.5), Luxembourg (12.4), and Romania (12.3).

The top 10 countries that consume the least alcohol across the WHO European Region are Tajikistan (0.9 litres), Azerbaijan (1.0), Turkey (1.8), Uzbekistan (2.6), Turkmenistan (3.1), Israel (4.4), Armenia (4.7), Kazakhstan (5.0), Albania (6.8), and North Macedonia (6.4).

It’s worth noting that most countries in this list, except for North Macedonia, Armenia and Israel, have Muslim-majority populations, for whom the consumption of alcohol is prohibited and condemned.

By contrast, within the EU, not a single country has an annual per capita consumption of fewer than five litres of pure alcohol, in fact, only five countries are below an annual per capita consumption of 10 litres: Italy (8.0), Malta (8.3 litres), Croatia (8.7), Sweden (9.0) and the Netherlands (9.7).

Europeans drink a lot, but how often?

Data shows that as people get older, their daily intake of alcohol also increases.

People aged between 15 and 24 are the smallest group in the daily drinker statistics (representing only 1 per cent), while those 75 or older are more likely to have a drink every day (16 per cent).

However, the senior group also has the biggest share of people who do not consume alcohol at all or have not consumed it in the past 12 months (40.3 per cent).

In the EU, drinking every day is most frequent in Portugal, with a fifth (20.7 per cent) of the population consuming alcohol daily, followed by Spain (13.0 per cent) and Italy (12.1 per cent). The lowest share of daily drinkers is around 1 per cent in Latvia and Lithuania.

The EU country with the biggest share of its population drinking alcohol on a weekly basis is the Netherlands (47.3 per cent), Luxembourg (43.1 per cent), and Belgium (40.8 per cent).

Croatia has the highest share of the population (38.3 per cent) saying it never consumed alcohol or has not consumed any in the last 12 months.

Across all European countries, there are clearly many more women than men staying away from alcohol.

Women are the most sober in Italy, where 46.7 per cent say they never consume alcohol or have not consumed any in the last 12 months (compared to 21.5 per cent of men). In Cyprus, that figure stands at 44.2 per cent of women vs. 12.8 per cent of men, and in Bulgaria at 42.0 per cent of women vs. 16.2 per cent of men.

Heavy drinking episodes, compared

Some EU countries have more heavy drinking episodes than others.

Heavy drinking is defined as ingesting the equivalent of more than 60 g of pure ethanol (approximately six standard alcoholic drinks) on a single occasion.

Almost one in five Europeans (19 per cent) reported having heavy drinking episodes at least once a month in 2019.

The biggest shares of adults taking part in heavy drinking episodes at least once a month were found in Denmark (38 per cent), Romania (35 per cent), Luxembourg (34 per cent), Germany (30 per cent) and Belgium (28 per cent).

Interestingly, some countries where a significant share of the population drinks alcohol every day, such as Spain and Italy, rank very low on the heavy drinking scale, with 6 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively.

Eurostat says regular risky single-occasion alcohol consumption is disproportionately more prevalent among men. Likewise, the percentage is higher among those with an upper secondary and college/university education and the highest incomes.

How much do people drink in the UK?

Because the United Kingdom left the EU in 2020, the island nation is no longer included in Eurostat data.

However, British people have a reputation for being heavy drinkers. So, how do their drinking habits compare with the EU?

According to Drinkaware, an independent charity which produces yearly reports about alcohol consumption in the UK, 57 per cent of British men, and 47 per cent of women, consumed alcohol at least weekly in 2020.

The average, 52 per cent, is over 23 percentage points higher than the average share of Europeans (28.8 per cent) who reported drinking once a week in 2019.

Fourteen per cent report never drinking (vs. 26.2 per cent in the EU).

How many drinks are safe?

There is no safe level of drinking, according to the WHO. And not drinking alcohol is the only way to avoid its damaging effects.

However, governments have issued guidance on low-risk consumption.

Canadians, for example, were recently told by the National Centre on Substance Use and Addiction to limit themselves to just two drinks a week. That’s a dramatic cut from the previous recommendation that allowed 10 drinks a week for women and 15 drinks a week for men.

Europe is more permissive than Canada, and the guidelines are relatively similar from one EU country to the next.

Belgium, for example, says the limit is 21 standard glasses per week for a man and 14 for a woman, whether these are half-pints of beer or small glasses of wine.

Ireland, however, advises a maximum of 17 standard weekly drinks for men and 11 for women.

Bulgaria and the Netherlands say the daily recommended limit is either one glass of wine, one beer or 50 ml of spirits.

Germany says the maximum tolerated daily dose for men is 24 g of alcohol, which is equivalent to either 500 ml of beer (one pint), 250 ml of wine (a large glass of wine), or 60 ml of liquor. Women are advised to drink half as much.

Estonia recommends at least three alcohol-free days per week, and not saving up on daily alcohol intake to then only binge later on.

Luxembourg and Cyprus advise favouring wine and beer over spirits. Norway says alcohol should not exceed 5 per cent of your total caloric intake.

The UK’s NHS recommends drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, spread across three days or more. That’s equivalent to around six medium-sized (175-ml) glasses of wine, or six pints of beer with 4 per cent alcohol content.

Because women have less body water than men of similar body weight, they absorb and metabolise alcohol differently. This means that, in general, women have higher concentrations of alcohol in the blood after drinking equivalent amounts of alcohol.

The deadly toll of alcohol

The WHO links alcohol to 30 per cent of deaths from unintentional injuries, such as drowning and road traffic accidents, and to 39 per cent of deaths from intentional injuries, such as suicide and homicide.

Drinking is also associated with unsafe psychological and social consequences, including initiating young adults into other substances and unprotected sex, which ultimately play a role in the transmission of diseases, such as HIV and viral hepatitis.

The WHO estimates that alcohol causes almost 1 million deaths annually across the WHO European Region, and 3 million deaths worldwide.

If we’re not careful, AI recruitment could institutionalise discrimination

Relying too heavily on automation and AI is akin to commercial airlines simply using autopilot: there’s too much on the line to dismiss the importance of human intervention, Oz Rashid writes.

Since recruiting methods are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI), the principles used to identify qualified individuals have come into question.

While these machines seem like a worthy replacement to subjective hiring managers, they can perpetuate historic company and algorithmic bias, discriminate against an applicant’s gender or age, and erode the laws in our democracies.

Therefore, the world’s workforce shouldn’t be selected through AI alone.

Trained professionals must be knowledgeable about AI recruiting methods and implement sufficient safeguards to keep programs ethical and the world safe.

Cases showing AI bias already exist

While AI has the potential to improve many aspects of the workplace, it also has the capability to undermine acceptable hiring practices and exacerbate wealth inequality.

A 2022 Cambridge University study revealed how voice and phrenology analyses are unreliable, biased methods for identifying ideal applicant traits.

Phrenology, a pseudoscience that claims skull patterns are linked to particular human characteristics, has been heavily contested, and voice analyses can be regarded as another underdeveloped practice not worthy of determining who deserves a job.

Since AI hiring tools can unintentionally discriminate against others, they can also be applied consciously as a way to manipulate a candidate pool.

A case from 2018 showed that while Amazon’s recruitment tool was designed to solicit applicants of all genders, the hiring data used to train the tool was male-dominant.

The software can easily be hardwired to reject applicants with disabilities, a specific racial background, or based on physical profiles alone.

For instance, a case from 2018 showed that while Amazon’s recruitment tool was designed to solicit applicants of all genders, the hiring data used to train the tool was male-dominant.

This caused the machine to interpret women as incompatible candidates and reject their applications.

Although this stemmed from biased data alone, this detailed analysis could screen applicants on information they didn’t even know they were sharing.

In 2019, the company HireVue released software that ranked job applicants’ employability based on their facial movements, word choice, and how they spoke.

Algorithms can have biases, too

Prior to AI recruitment tools, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) have been popular applications used since the 90s.

ATSs are helpful for sourcing, filtering, and analysing candidates throughout the entire recruiting and hiring process, but they can exacerbate workplace bias, and many have become outdated.

Therefore, replacing old ATSs with modernised tools is smart as long as experienced professionals are still involved.

All humans have an unconscious bias to prefer things familiar to them, which can directly skew the hiring data a machine learns from.

Too often, hiring managers and other business leaders think that AI will replace the jobs of talented HR teams because it’s less biased and more efficient.

In reality, even the most carefully programmed AI will have algorithmic biases and can make disconcerting decisions.

All humans have an unconscious bias to prefer things familiar to them, which can directly skew the hiring data a machine learns from.

Managing AI use in recruiting is crucial for protecting the rights of every citizen and ensuring that society has access to opportunities that keep them and their families alive.

This kind of regulation can only be done through proper safeguards and monitoring.

We shouldn’t rely on autopilot too much

From the moment candidates are sourced, machine learning and predictive algorithms choose which individuals should see a job advertisement and which should be accepted.

A study from Northeastern University in Boston and USC reported that Facebook advertised 85% of cashier jobs to women and showcased a taxi company’s vacancies to audiences that were 75% black.

This situation most likely resulted from an AI’s independent evaluation of what applicants each company preferred.

Relying too heavily on automation and AI is akin to commercial airlines simply using autopilot: there’s too much on the line to dismiss the importance of human intervention.

While that behaviour isn’t inherently malicious, it’s in violation of US Equal Employment Opportunity laws.

Unfortunately, 79% of organisations used a combination of automation and AI for hiring in 2022, and the majority are completely unaware that their system is producing biased outcomes.

Relying too heavily on automation and AI is akin to commercial airlines simply using autopilot: there’s too much on the line to dismiss the importance of human intervention.

Future-proofing efforts are everyone’s responsibility

In the past, organisations may have been shielded from being held accountable for their biases.

However, new legislation like New York’s Local Law 144 guarantees transparency and accountability in AI hiring.

The European Union’s upcoming AI Act is somewhat more opaque as to what type of remedies will be in place to prevent AI’s hiring bias, but the intention to create protections is there.

Meanwhile, organisations should already be educating themselves on which protocols protect them and their applicants.

Meanwhile, organisations should already be educating themselves on which protocols protect them and their applicants.

Minimising the risk of exacerbating discrimination in the recruitment and hiring process can be achieved through the implementation of safeguards such as auditing systems designed to detect bias and conducting thorough reviews of the data sets used by AI learning.

Vendors should also be able to provide transparency within their algorithms, including how they were trained, what data was used, and what assumptions were made.

This information should be accompanied by clear explanations of their efforts to mitigate bias and verified compliance to conduct ongoing testing that will catch future biases.

AI can still improve existing hiring practices if incorporated safely

Permitting AI to fully control an entire company’s hiring processes should never be acceptable.

This allowance disengages employers from the people they need, and even worse, it could perpetuate discriminatory hiring decisions.

To counter this, we must learn how to incorporate AI safely and effectively into our existing hiring practices. This will benefit the long-term health of our organisations, the workforce that supports them, and global economies.

AI is a marvellous tool with a unique value proposition, but there is a balance that we need to strike to produce transformational results and keep humankind in control of its future.

_Oz Rashid is the CEO and founder of MSH, a global tech and talent solutions company.
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_At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at view@euronews.com to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.
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EU to issue ‘warning’ to countries supporting Russia in next sanction package, VDL says

The next round of EU sanctions against Russia aims to close loopholes and crack down on circumvention and could target companies and countries that help Russia acquire sanctioned goods.

An intense diplomatic week is starting for the EU on Tuesday with the bloc determined to put support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia at the centre of discussions.

The first summit of the week will be in Reykjavik, Iceland where the leaders of 46 members of the Council of Europe will convene. The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the heads of the European Commission and Council will then head to Hiroshima, Japan, for a G7 leaders’ summit. The latter two will then hop over to Seoul for an EU-South Korea summit.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, told reporters on Monday that the main underlying message the EU will be keen to push is the bloc’s united determination to support Ukraine for as long as it takes as it fights Russia’s invasion and to ensure Moscow is held accountable for the war and the atrocities committed.

At the G7 summit, where the US, UK, Canada and Japan, also sit at the table, the EU wants members to take stock of the packages of sanctions already rolled out against Russia as well as those in the making.

EU countries are currently negotiating an 11th round of sanctions aimed at closing loopholes and tackling circumvention. The new measures will allow the bloc to target companies and countries that are believed to help Russia evade the penalties.

One of the worries is that some third countries have been importing sanctioned EU goods and then exporting them to Russia, thus allowing Moscow to acquire dual-use technology that can be used by the military despite the bloc’s export ban.

Von der Leyen said of the planned measure that “it’s basically a warning that we are serious about our sanction that we could ban these goods from going to that third country if there is clear evidence that this is a circumvention of sanctions and deliverable deliveries to Russia.”

She also said the proposed raft of sanctions could extend the list of EU products banned from transiting via Russia.

“We see that there is a discrepancy between what starts in the European Union, transits Russia and then ends up in the third country. And therefore, we are discussing as a deterrent the question of whether there should be such a transit ban. There are several watch points within the mechanism to make sure that it is justified,” she added.

But the EU knows it also needs to focus on outreach, Michel said, in particular with developing countries to not only strengthen ties but also explain the sanctions against Russia.

This will be primarily addressed at the G7 summit where eight other nations — Australia, Brazil, Comoros, India, Indonesia, South Korea, the Cook Islands, and Vietnam — have also been invited.

Some countries in the Global South have repeated the Russian narrative that the West is endangering global food security despite the fact Russian agrifood products have not been sanctioned and can therefore be exported worldwide and transit through the EU.

“We will discuss openly and frankly about why we are convinced these sanctions are necessary and justified. Russian propaganda is built on lies and conspiracy. We are fighting back with the facts and figures,” Michel told reporters.

“Developing and emerging countries have expressed concerns that the G7 is focusing too much on Ukraine and not paying enough attention to their needs and priorities. And we have heard their concerns. We want to build strong partnerships with developing and emerging countries in ways that are mutually beneficial.

China will be the other main topic as the EU and other Western allies seek to “de-risk” by reducing economic dependencies on Beijing. The EU wants for instance to toughen its arsenal to ensure key infrastructure and technologies remain under European control with the deployment of an outbound investment screening or advanced export controls.

Finally, the green transition and the need to accelerate the rollout of clean tech should also be on the agenda of the various summits.

Welcome, Crypto, to the Fiery Cauldron of U.S. Presidential Politics

Before the push for the White House really gets rolling, digital assets – including bitcoins and CBDCs – are being hefted as ideological effigies, but will it matter?

Whether the crypto industry wants the spotlight or not, digital assets are among the earliest talking points in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with the most prominent of the new candidates even invoking bitcoins in his campaign opener as evidence of President Joe Biden’s missteps.

In an election in which the heaviest fireworks will likely be seen on the side of the Republican challengers, former President Donald Trump – occupying the role as Biden’s leading nemesis – is himself facing an early-days threat from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who immediately staked out crypto as a kind of political shorthand.

“The current regime, clearly, has it out for Bitcoin,” DeSantis said from his campaign’s Twitter Spaces launch pad, using crypto to represent innovation and personal freedom. “Bitcoin represents a threat to them, they’re trying to regulate it out of existence.”

If digital assets keep figuring into presidential politics, they’ll likely feature as a stand-in to illustrate the perceived abuses of the federal government, according to industry insiders and political experts. But the attention may not contribute to the policy progress crypto businesses crave, because the sector is waiting for comprehensive rules, not political sentiments.

So far, Biden’s administration is being accused of squeezing emerging crypto businesses and trying to set up a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to spy on citizens, according to DeSantis and one of Biden’s challengers from his own party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For DeSantis, his pro-crypto position also separates him from chief rival Trump. The digital assets views of the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination have historically been rooted in distrust, with Trump having declared in 2019 that he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, “whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” However, more recently Trump profited from his own series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), so his position remains murky.

Two weeks before DeSantis opened his campaign beside tech mogul Elon Musk, he sought to make a political moment out of his state’s “ban” of a U.S. CBDC. Experts in the commercial law Florida used to act against a potential digital dollar have said Florida’s effort isn’t a ban at all, but that might not matter for political supporters impressed by DeSantis’ zeal.

“He seems to understand that private solutions being developed in the crypto markets are likely to be superior, in part because they pose fewer risks to the individual liberty of the public,” said Dave Weisberger, CEO of CoinRoutes, a trading tech startup in DeSantis’ home state.

But DeSantis is generally vague about his defense of cryptocurrencies, and his remarks don’t seem to acknowledge they are online instruments that can operate outside the whims of sovereign states. When he says that Democrats – given another four years – will “probably end up killing it,” it seems to suggest the U.S. lawmakers would have more reach than they do, and that crypto won’t find homes in other global jurisdictions, such as in Europe.

“It’s more about how he’s trying to paint himself as a fresh face,” said Ron Hammond, director of government relations for the Blockchain Association in Washington. “He’s trying to say ‘I’m the younger gun here who’s trying to get something done.’”

In the know

A rival Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has argued the Florida governor doesn’t know the topic well. The biotech entrepreneur told CoinDesk he’s pro-Bitcoin because he sees it as a “decentralized alternative” to the U.S dollar, improving the country’s financial infrastructure by presenting “a source of competition to the existing system.” And he says he understands it much more than DeSantis.

Other notable Republican candidates, such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and his state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, have reserved comment on the financial movement. Despite his position on the Senate Banking Committee that could help decide U.S. crypto’s fate, Scott has taken the most neutral possible stance, saying lawmakers should take a “thoughtful, bipartisan and balanced approach” to overseeing the industry in the U.S.

Among the Democratic challengers to standard-bearer Biden, Kennedy – who also holds other views that overlap with Republican positions – is fervently pro-crypto.

“Cryptocurrencies, led by bitcoin, along with other crypto technologies are a major innovation engine,” Kennedy wrote in a tweet earlier this month. “It is a mistake for the U.S. government to hobble the industry and drive innovation elsewhere.”

The most popular of the pro-crypto candidates among voters, DeSantis, still trails well behind Trump in primary polling, but the fact that there are multiple candidates saying nice things about digital assets is a positive for some in the sector.

“We now have three presidential candidates, spanning both political parties, who explicitly support the digital asset industry,” CoinRoutes’ Weisberger said. “While Republicans are trying to make crypto a partisan issue, the industry itself doesn’t believe it should be, which is why the support from RFK Jr. is also potentially important.”

Biden is the only candidate with a federal record on digital assets. So far, his administration hasn’t set down any significant crypto policy, and the financial regulators he picked have taken a staunchly critical view of the industry. His Securities and Exchange Commission chief, Gary Gensler, may be the most antagonistic of the bunch, combating digital assets businesses in courtrooms and with his agency’s rule proposals. And the direct messages from Biden’s Department of the Treasury and his own White House have been increasingly suspicious of the industry.

Though it wasn’t a campaign remark, Biden, who last month formally announced

Even Licensed Firms Say Opening Bank Accounts Is Hard in Hong Kong #prizmabet

Hong Kong has said it wants to be a crypto hub but its banks are rejecting account opening applications.

Crypto companies’ applications to operate in Hong Kong following its push to reinstate itself as a crypto hub have been piling up, but these companies are finding it difficult to do something as basic as open a bank account.

Applicants told CoinDesk that just eight officers at the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) are handling around 80 applications, and even licensed firms are running into difficulties when it comes to bank accounts.

“This probably would have been a different story six or nine months ago,” Amy Yu, APAC CEO for crypto bank SEBA, told CoinDesk.

Hong Kong has become a jurisdiction that companies are considering, after regulators relaxed their opposition to the sector, even as other countries look more critically at crypto. Singapore’s financial regulator has made it clear to the market that it will be less supportive of what it considers to be speculative, and the U.S. looks less than friendly to crypto.

Hong Kong’s de facto central bank knows that banking access is an issue for crypto companies. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has reminded banks that there’s no ban on offering crypto firms accounts, but a roundtable it organized last month, attended by banks and crypto firms, focused only on easing access for firms that already held or which were applying for licenses, an attendee told CoinDesk.

“It was more like a wish list from the regulator,” he said. “Whether the banks fully embrace it is another matter.”

CoinDesk spoke to a C-suite executive at a crypto firm based in Hong Kong that holds a Type 9 license, which allows the company to carry out asset management activities. The company was still unable to open a Hong Kong bank account and relied on overseas banking partners. This executive said that this made on- and off-ramping difficult for potential investors.

“It’s not clear to us what extra information the banks need,” she told CoinDesk. “Internally, they don’t seem sure about what they want from us.”

Facing rejection

Venture capital firm Braeside founder Tak Lo told CoinDesk that “many crypto companies present themselves as other firms other than asset management firms in order to facilitate bank account opening.”

When companies are upfront about what they do, that can mean their applications are rejected.

Prosynergy managing director Louie Lee told CoinDesk that opening bank accounts is an “acute issue” at the moment, and that banks can be “sensitive and restrictive in their approach.”

Amidone all the talk of licensing and regulations in Hong Kong, “not all crypto-related activities require a license,” Lee continued. “You may be operating in an unregulated space, but this does not mean it’s illegal,” he said.

“The process is you apply and you get rejected,” Jehan Chu, founder of crypto venture capital firm Kenetic, told CoinDesk.

Even if firms manage to get accounts, Chu added, “six months later you get it shut down for no reason.” He said that firms try to stay low-profile.

Sometimes firms opt to buy an expensive insurance or investment product so that their relationship is more valuable for the bank.

It’s considered the cost of doing business since banks are for-profit entities after all. But that kind of decision doesn’t make sense for many startups.

Keeping accounts open

Even players who have successfully opened bank accounts “have a lot of uncertainty on whether or not they can continue having that account going forward,” corporate credit card issuer Reap co-founder Kevin Kang told CoinDesk.

This uncertainty means they’re constantly on the look out for new options and opportunities to set up bank accounts.

“They don’t have visibility on when they’re going to be checked,” Kang said, referring to banks examining transactions.

When transactions are targeted by a compliance team within banks, it can mean the company is unable to use that account. Unless they provide a certain amount of documentation within a period of time on those transactions, their transactions may be stopped and sent back.

Firms are subject to the whims of the bank account providers and end up dedicating resources to opening bank accounts.

It’s not the first time an industry in Hong Kong has encountered issues with bank account opening.

Kang points to money-service operators who held licenses from the Customs and Excise Department that enabled them to exchange funds. Banks were reluctant to serve them due to perceived anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing risk.

Policies or actions from the regulator may give the banks more confidence such as having deposit requirements, Kang said.

Lee added that it doesn’t help that another Asian financial hub, Singapore, has had trouble with the collapses of crypto companies which did hold licenses, like Three Arrows Capital.

Some local players have stepped into the space, with virtual bank ZA Bank presenting itself as the go-to bank for Web3 businesses.

Following the collapse of crypto-friendly bank Silvergate, “inquiries have increased enormously,” ZA co-head of retail banking Devon Sin told CoinDesk.

Most players who CoinDesk spoke to were optimistic about future discussions on banking between the industry and the regulators.

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Of the roundtable last month, Lee told CoinDesk, “It’s a step in the right direction whereby people can have a constructive discussion with the regulators on their challenges and the regulators are proactively seeking solutions.”

Edited by Nikhilesh De.

Fleeing U.S. Crypto Firms ‘Welcome,’ French Regulator Says #prizmabet

100-odd companies could be registered in France as the just-agreed MiCA EU crypto legislation beds in, Financial Markets Authority officials said

PARIS, France – Crypto companies fleeing U.S. regulatory uncertainty have been offered a welcome in France, by officials boasting a regulatory framework that offers relative predictability.

The European Union member already boasts around 74 registered crypto companies – a number that could surge to 100 as a last round of firms seek to anticipate the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets rules that were formally signed off by ministers earlier Tuesday.

“In France, we are proud to be pioneers” with the crypto service asset provider regime, known as PSAN, that was legislated in 2019, Benoît de Juvigny, Secretary General of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), told reporters Tuesday.

“If American players want to benefit, in the very short term, from the French regime, and from the start of 2025 from European arrangements, clearly they are welcome,” he added. “We have good relations and discussions with our U.S. counterparts.”

The legal certainty now apparently achieved in France is only recently gained. In January, lawyers were warning that legislative amendments proposed by the national Senate – eventually watered down – could kill innovation.

There are also still some gray areas: French lawmakers are still pondering what kinds of crypto social media influencers should be able to promote. The EU is still deliberating on how to regulate financial services that have no central entity, and Juvigny said the AMF will produce a paper with some ideas in the coming weeks.

But essentially the legal framework is all but nailed down, contrasting sharply with the situation across the Atlantic. In recent weeks, players including Bittrex and Coinbase have quit the U.S., or threatened to, citing the uncertain regulatory environment caused by active regulatory enforcement, combined with no obvious prospect of a crypto law from Washington.

Not easy

France may be predictable and stable, but that’s not the same as being easy or straightforward.

Seventy-four companies, including Binance and Bitstamp, have already been awarded a registration demonstrating basic governance and money-laundering compliance. Firms can also take the further step of seeking a license, if they have enough capital, though no company has yet acquired one.

Under new transitional measures agreed earlier this year as a bridge to MiCA, companies applying as of July will undergo a “reinforced” registration, in which they have to prove they have resilient IT systems and a conflict of interest policy. MiCA itself, set to take effect in 2025, grants the right to serve the pan-European market, and extends wider to include services such as crypto investment, advice and portfolio management.

That web of four different coexisting regimes is complex, as de Juvigny himself concedes – but officials are keen to bat off complaints from the industry that some requirements are impossible to meet in practice, and procedures unduly lengthy.

Complaints

Contrary to some industry concerns, officials say it’s indeed possible for crypto firms to get commercially insured to AMF standards. “I’ve seen the contracts with my own eyes,” Stéphane Pontoizeau, a director at the AMF responsible for supervising market infrastructure and intermediaries, told reporters.

Those who do their homework by studying the AMF’s guidelines will find they can acquire a new status in just a few months, Pontoizeau said – adding that those who find it takes longer often didn’t get their house in order.

With dozens likely waiting in the wings to get registered, there could be around a hundred companies on the “start line” in France before MiCA kicks in, Pontoizeau said – though some, headquartered in other EU member states or serving only the French market, may not seek a full AMF license under the EU law.

And for some, France’s rigor may be the point – such as Circle, the stablecoin issuer which has applied for registration from the AMF, and said it also wants to seek a license.

Together with the ACPR, the arm of the French central bank responsible for vetting crypto companies’ money laundering compliance, “the AMF … have a strong reputation for being a major market regulator that is forward thinking but manages risk well,” Circle’s Vice President for Policy and Regulatory Strategy Teana Baker-Taylor told CoinDesk. “It’s not a light touch jurisdiction.”

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Quotations have been translated from French.

Edited by Nikhilesh De.

Florida’s DeSantis Waging Toothless Campaign Against Digital Dollars, Lawyers Say #prizmabet

The political movement to use state commerce rules to stop central bank digital currencies is based in legal nonsense that has no power to ban anything, experts contend.

The state-level campaign against a U.S. digital dollar made its first foray into established law with Governor Ron DeSantis’ signature on Florida’s effort to block the use of virtual government-backed money in business transactions.

But the Florida governor’s rhetoric that his state is banning central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as “government overreach and woke corporate monitoring” may not amount to much on paper. Legal experts in this facet of commercial law suggest the state’s effort is nonsensical and potentially harmful for the digital assets sector DeSantis said he’s trying to protect.

“They didn’t ban anything,” said Carla Reyes, an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, who has done work in both digital assets law and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) that Florida is focused on. “The law does exactly zero of the things that it says that it does.”

The state’s new tweak “expressly prohibits the use of a federally adopted CBDC by excluding it from the definition of money within Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code,” according to the governor’s office. From introduction to his signature last week took just 43 days.

DeSantis – one of the Republican Party’s early favorites as a potential presidential candidate next year – turned his May 12 signing of the law into a political event, claiming it as the start of a potential multi-state push from Republican state lawmakers to counter a digital dollar well before the federal government decides whether to issue it or not. North Carolina has also been considering a measure to oppose a U.S. CBDC, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem recently vetoed a bill to update its UCC in a way she argued would have allowed for CBDCs and “a potential future overreach by the federal government.”

“We’re on offense in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a press conference, standing behind a sign reading “Big Brother’s Digital Dollar,” referencing George Orwell’s tale of supreme government control, “1984.” The new law – effective in July – declared digital dollars won’t be considered money in the state’s version of the commercial code.

The UCC represents an accord among states, which have largely adopted this common set of rules for buying and selling of goods and conducting other financial transactions across state borders. Florida has officially thrown its CBDC wrench into that standardization, saying digital dollars aren’t money as defined in the code. But it doesn’t really ban CBDC use in interstate commerce, just puts those assets in another category than money, lawyers say.

“I could still buy a computer using CBDCs if that’s what they wanted me to pay in,” said Reyes, who said the government-backed assets would now fall into the bucket of “general intangibles” under the UCC. “The UCC doesn’t have the power to ban people from using any type of exchange. That’s not what it does.”

CBDC Opposition

DeSantis called the CBDC “a massive transfer of power from individual consumers to a central authority,” and he said the federal government would “have the ability to control where that money is going,” citing a future government’s ability to stop gun purchases or halt somebody from buying too much gasoline.

Though DeSantis and other Florida Republicans suggest the U.S. is definitely heading toward issuing a digital dollar, that view isn’t yet reflected by what’s happening. While the administration of President Joe Biden is under orders to develop the concept of a U.S. CBDC, no federal entity has yet declared support for issuing it.

The Federal Reserve would be in charge of the digital dollar, and officials including Chair Jerome Powell have said the central bank won’t act without backing from the White House and Congress. The Fed also doesn’t want to be in the retail CBDC business, so officials have declared that it won’t administer individual accounts and that people’s transactions would have to be managed by banks or in other outside digital wallets.

DeSantis acknowledged that if Congress eventually authorizes a U.S. CBDC, the state may have to back down. But more than that, Andrea Tosato, a legal scholar who has advised on UCC amendments and teaches at University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, said that any federal law on this point will automatically override state law.

If that happens, though, it won’t have anything significant to override in Florida, he and Reyes suggested.

The UCC Reality

The UCC represents longstanding, battle-tested standards for basic transactions, and they‘re meant to be “super boring” and nonpolitical, Tosato said. The Florida effort to use it as a shield against digital dollars is “painting the UCC as something that it is not.”

The UCC gives both sides of transactions basic legal protections, Tosato explained, but it doesn’t tell them what they can or can’t exchange. That’s the job of regulations or criminal codes.

When one digs into “the rabbit hole and the craziness of what was done with this Florida bill,” Tosato said, “there is no light-bulb moment. It makes no sense.”

The governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on these points. DeSantis suggested during his press conference that he wasn’t just protecting people’s financial privacy but was also seeking to defend crypto from federal government interference.

“I think they want to crowd out and eliminate other types of digital assets like cryptocurrency, because they can’t control that,” he said.

While Florida rewrites its single-state corner of the 50-state standards, though, it’s also rebuffing a set of amendments suggested last year that were meant to set standards for the interstate use of cryptocurrencies, including in such examples as the use of bitcoin as collateral in lending. That could have been a foundation for digital assets in commerce, Tosato argued, and other states have been moving forward to adopt the changes.

Even the way Florida defines a CBDC could be problematic. Its new law says a CBDC is a government-issued digital currency “that is made directly available to a consumer,” but Tosato contends that doesn’t reflect any of the current or planned CBDCs, which generally have service providers manage the accounts or wallets for using the virtual currency.

“There is no CBDC anywhere that is issued directly to consumers,” Tosato said.

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As DeSantis and his allies celebrate their CBDC ban, Tosato says they’ve compromised the UCC’s crypto modernization and are misrepresenting the meaning of their overhaul of Florida law.

“It’s done in a way that makes no sense and is completely broken,” he said.