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.
SEC emails illuminated ex-official Hinman’s 2018 view on ETH, which Ripple’s top lawyer said was used to ‘destroy and disrupt’ U.S. crypto, but this probably won’t steer agency policy.
Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seem to be on the same page about the documents known as the Hinman Emails: The former official’s past remarks shouldn’t govern current policy.
Despite the rush of attention this week on the insider deliberations that went into writing a five-year-old speech from William Hinman – the former head of the SEC’s corporation finance division – the agency’s past uncertainty over the status of ether (ETH) never amounted to formal commission-approved rules or guidance. So the dialogue over the ex-official’s one-time remarks may offer some insights, but it’s unlikely to move the needle on the agency’s crypto policy.
“Nothing in these documents creates precedent or establishes law,” said Andrew Hinkes, a lawyer at K&L Gates who co-chairs its digital assets practice. At best, the emails give “a helpful snapshot of certain SEC staffers’ views on some issues at a point in time,” so it’s useful for those trying to understand where the agency has been coming from on the crypto-as-securities debate, but there’s nothing the SEC can be held to, Hinkes said.
Hinman, in his speech that’s still posted on the SEC website, had said he didn’t “see a need to regulate ether” – a view that was debated among officials inside the agency even as he said it. The remarks have been a particular focus of Ripple, in light of the parallels between ETH and the XRP token closely associated with Ripple’s business.
“The SEC fostered regulatory confusion in the marketplace,” Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty said Thursday in an interview on CoinDesk TV. “They knew the marketplace was confused, then they took steps to deliberately aggravate that confusion.”
Alderoty had also tweeted what he thinks the emails should mean: “Hinman’s speech should never again be invoked in any serious discussion about whether a token is or is not a security.”
As it happens, that seems fine with the SEC. The agency hasn’t relied on Hinman’s position in recent years and has moved on with other remarks from SEC Chair Gary Gensler that suggest a different view. After Ethereum’s high-profile move to proof-of-stake, Gensler said that such tokens may actually be securities, though he didn’t specify ETH.
Agency spokespeople declined to comment on the release of the emails this week, and Hinman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Still, none of the issues debated around Hinman’s speech have legal bearing until the SEC’s five commissioners make a new rule, issue guidance or bring an enforcement action that explicitly makes the case that ETH is a security. That’s the chief point of interest for Ripple, which has been fighting with the regulator in court over whether the XRP token associated with its products is a security.
After the company also waged this fierce campaign to win access to the SEC’s emails, Ripple’s Alderoty would like to see them remain in the limelight, arguing that an investigation should be conducted into why Hinman said what he did. He said the SEC has relied on those remarks in its ongoing battles with the sector.
“They’ve weaponized it to bring a series of enforcement actions and trying – through regulation-by-enforcement, we now know – to really destroy and disrupt this crypto economy in the United States,” Alderoty told CoinDesk TV.
But others aren’t sure there’s anything in the messages to alter the high-stakes debate over how crypto will be regulated in the U.S.
“Those who expected bombshells were probably disappointed, but for those who work to understand these markets, there are helpful inclusions that merit further consideration,” Hinkes said.
“I don’t believe that the Hinman emails are particularly significant from a legal standpoint,” said Grant Gulovsen, an Illinois-based lawyer who works with crypto clients, in an email. “I don’t see how it helps Ripple/XRP. And if the Hinman speech is no longer (or never was) the view of the SEC, then it’s not good for crypto generally.”
Hinman – who noted during the 2018 speech that it was his personal view – took a position that crypto projects could become “sufficiently decentralized” that buyers wouldn’t expect anybody was at the helm, so they couldn’t be investment contracts regulated by the SEC. Gulovsen said that idea is still useful as “a reasonable application” of securities law for digital assets.
The crypto-friendly bank was also denied immediate membership with the Federal Reserve, with the court saying Custodia could pursue membership through other channels.
Custodia’s challenge of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s decision to deny the crypto-friendly bank access to the Fed banking services can continue, a U.S. district court ruled Thursday, rejecting a Fed motion to dismiss the case.
The U.S. District Court of Wyoming, however, did reject Custodia’s request that the Fed be compelled to grant it a so-called master account and membership with the Fed, Instead, Custodia must continue its claims via normal channels.
“Custodia Bank will get its day in court,” Patrick Toomey, retired U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, tweeted about the decision on Friday afternoon. Toomey, along with the state of Wyoming, filed amicus briefs to support Custodia’s suit.
Even though the court declined to grant Wyoming-based Custodia’s request, it said that it was only rejecting the request because there was another avenue Custodia could pursue,
“Custodia has stated a plausible claim for relief … against FRBKC [Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas]. However, relief under the Mandamus Act is not available to Custodia against the Board of Directors because the APA (Administrative Procedure Act) provides an adequate remedy,” the ruling said.
The district court also said that if the Kansas City Fed had been alone in denying Custodia its master license, Custodia’s claim would fail. However, the court said Custodia’s claim that the Fed Board of Governors had weighed in on the decision was plausible.
“The alleged occurrence of certain events, and the timing of those events, plausibly suggest the Board of Governors had at least some hand in controlling the outcome of Custodia’s master account application,” the court wrote in its ruling.
In October 2020, Custodia applied to the Kansas City Fed for a master account. Without such an account, banks can’t offer the same services as institutions with such accounts. Then in August the next year, Custodia applied to the Fed Board of Governors for membership, which would subject the bank to the Fed’s oversight and regulations.
Eighteen months later, in January 2023, Custodia was rejected in every single category the Fed assesses, partly because of its crypto friendliness and part because it was a state-chartered bank, not a nationally chartered one.
In its rejection, the central bank claimed Custodia’s decision not to federally insure deposits and Custodia’s dependence on a vibrant crypto market made it a danger to itself and its customers.
BTC and ether both lost ground in May, the first monthly decline of 2023. LTC and RNDR were among the month’s big gainers.
May gray turned to June gloom on Thursday as crypto prices veered slightly into the red.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was recently trading at about $26,950, down 0.5% over the past 24 hours and the second consecutive day BTC dropped below $27,000, according to CoinDesk Indexes. The inauspicious beginning to June carried over the downward trend from May when bitcoin’s price dipped almost 4% to break a four-month streak of gains.
Bitcoin soared more than 60% from January, reaching to about $31,000 at one point in mid-April as crypto regained its luster as a safe-haven asset following a string of U.S. bank failures that raised concerns about traditional finance.
“Anytime you have an asset that has a significant volatility such as cryptocurrency, any real monthly move that is under a safe flat fee of 5% is relatively muted,” CoinDesk Head of Index Research Todd Groth told CoinDesk’s “First Mover” program on Wednesday. “The broad CMI was down about 2% to 3%. In the context of how much these assets can move over historical basis, it’s really a bit of a choppy month. Now we’re looking for that next big narrative to move higher.”
Groth noted optimistically that markets had recently priced in a resumption of more hawkish monetary policy after hopes rose in early May amid encouraging signs that inflation was waning enough to allow the U.S. central bank to halt its nearly year-long campaign of interest rate increases.
“We have repriced interest rate expectations to not be so dovish without any sort of big market correction lower, so that has been positive,” Groth said but added that the “repricing interest rates higher” has also been a sort of a headwind.”
Ether, the second largest crypto in market value, was recently trading at about $1,870, up slightly from Wednesday, same time. Other major digital assets were mostly down, albeit not by much, although litecoin was an exception as it recently rose more than 7% with investors seemingly buoyed by the network’s halving in two months and a jump in activity in May.
Groth noted that LTC and RNDR, the token of the Render Network, a provider of decentralized graphic processing units-based rendering solutions, ranked the CoinDesk Indexes biggest gainers for May. LTC and RNDR have risen roughly 20% and 7.5% over the past 30 days. “We’ve seen the narrative of GPUs broadly repurposed to be these big AI (artificial intelligence) clusters and Render is effectively a decentralized AI cluster,” Groth said. “So there’s no surprise that on a relative basis, it outperformed, given the buzz and hype over Chat GPT, all these LLMs. That caught some of that Nvidia bump up.”
The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of crypto markets performance, recently sank 0.4%.
Meanwhile, stocks rose a day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the debt limit ensuring the government could meet its financial obligations at least for the near-term and avoid a shutdown. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500, which has a hefty technology component, both rose about a percentage point. Gold inched up 0.6% to above $1,995, although it remains well below its near record high of nearly a month ago.
In an email to CoinDesk, Leo Mizuhara, CEO of institutional crypto management platform Hashnote, wrote that crypto markets had “dodged a bullet, thanks to the resolution to the debt ceiling crisis and a growing embrace of digital assets in Asia, particularly in Hong Hong, which has been trying to create easier access for retail investors.
But he added that he is “not expecting a huge breakout for Bitcoin at the moment, and compared the current stasis in markets to 2019 when investors were recovering from an extended bear market.
“We’re basically in a builder’s market,” Mizuhara wrote. “A lot of interesting protocols and companies are being launched. Venture funding is creeping back in. So, like in 2019, we’re likely in this build-up phase that sees a lot of positive energy flowing into the space that in turn sets the foundations for the next bull cycle. Despite the difficulties facing the crypto industry in the United States, what’s happening globally makes it hard not to feel optimistic right now.”
At least one person has been killed in a third successive night of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s capital city. Although Kyiv’s air defences reportedly shot down most of the incoming missiles, fires were caused by falling debris.
Russia launched a pre-dawn attack on Ukraine’s capital Tuesday, killing at least one person and sending Kyiv’s residents again scrambling into shelters to escape a relentless wave of daylight and nighttime bombardments. Moscow authorities reported a drone attack on the Russian capital.
At least 20 Shahed drones were destroyed by air defence forces in Kyiv’s airspace in Russia’s third attack on the capital in the past 24 hours, according to the Kyiv Military Administration.
The buzzing of drones could be heard over the city, followed by loud explosions as they were taken down by air defence systems.
In Moscow, residents reported hearing explosions and Mayor Sergei Sobyanin later confirmed there had been a drone attack.
Sobyanin said in a Telegram post that the attack caused “insignificant damage” to several buildings and that no one has been seriously hurt, without elaborating.
Residents of two buildings damaged in the attack were evacuated, Sobyanin said.
There was no immediate comment on the attacks from Ukrainian officials.
It was the second reported attack on Moscow after authorities said two drones targeted the Kremlin earlier this month in what was labelled an attempt on President Vladimir Putin’s life.
In the attacks overnight on Kyiv, one person died and three were injured when a high-rise building in the Holosiiv district caught fire. It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze but frequently the falling debris from drones being hit and the interceptor missiles have caused damage on the ground.
The building’s upper two floors were destroyed, and there may be people under the rubble, the Kiyv Military Administration said. More than 20 people were evacuated.
Resident Valeriya Oreshko told The Associated Press in the aftermath that even though the immediate threat was over, the attacks had everyone on edge.
“You are happy that you are alive, but think about what will happen next,” the 39-year-old said.
Oksana, who only gave her first name, said the whole building shook when it was hit.
“Go to shelters, because you really do not know where it (the drone) will fly,” she advised others. “We hold on.”
Elsewhere in the capital, falling debris caused a fire in a private house in the Darnytskyi district and three cars were set alight in the Pechersky district, according to the military administration.
The series of attacks that began Sunday included a rare daylight attack Monday that left puffs of white smoke in the blue skies.
On that day, Russian forces fired 11 ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv at about 11:30 a.m., according to Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. All of them were shot down, he said.
Debris from the intercepted missiles fell in Kyiv’s central and northern districts during the morning, landing in the middle of traffic on a city road and also starting a fire on the roof of a building, the Kyiv military administration said. At least one civilian was reported hurt.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it launched a series of strikes early Monday targeting Ukrainian air bases with precision long-range air-launched missiles. The strikes destroyed command posts, radars, aircraft and ammunition stockpiles, it claimed. It didn’t say anything about hitting cities or other civilian areas.
A beluga whale previously accused of spying for the Russian navy was seen swimming near the Swedish coast on Sunday.
The several-metre-long white whale was first sited a few years ago wearing a camera harness near Norway, fuelling suspicions it was being used for espionage.
It has since been nicknamed Hvaldimir, combining the words hval (whale in Norwegian) and the common Russian first name Vladimir.
When first spotted in 2019, the whale’s harness was fitted with a base for a small camera with “Equipment St. Peterburg” printed on the plastic strap.
The biologists who found Hvaldimir were able to remove the harness fixed around his head.
The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries speculated at the time the whale had escaped from an enclosure where it was possibly trained by the Russian Navy since it was accustomed to human company and would approach ships.
Moscow has never officially commented on the case.
On Sunday, Hvaldimir was seen near Hunnebostrand in west Sweden, further south than its first appearance in 2019, according to OneWhale organisation’s Sebastian Strand.
Hvaldimir has been moving in the southern direction quicker than its normal pace, Strand said.
Strand noted the whale is moving away from the condition that Belugas naturally favour – the colder waters of Greenland and the Russian and Norwegian Arctic.
The Barents Sea and the North Atlantic are strategic areas for the Western and Russian navies, which have placed submarines in the zone.
“We don’t know why it’s moving so fast at the moment,” he said, acknowledging that Hvaldimir’s quest to find a partner could be one of the possible reasons.
“It could be hormones urging it to find a mate. Or loneliness, as belugas are very social, he could be looking for others,” he said.
Hvaldimir appears to have been in good health in recent years, according to Strand, and is feeding on fish attracted by the large salmon farms in Norway.
But OneWhale is concerned about his ability to fetch food, saying it has already identified signs of weight loss.
On 30 May, 1842, Queen Victoria survived the second attempt on her life in as many days.
Many monarchs manage to avoid attempts on their lives for their entire reign, but Queen Victoria was not so lucky.
On 29 May, the British monarch was returning to Buckingham Palace after a church service with her beloved husband Prince Albert beside her in the royal carriage. Hiding as the horse-drawn vehicle made its way down The Mall in London, John Francis, a 20-year-old cabinetmaker – described by Albert as “a little, swarthy, ill-looking radical” pointed a gun at the Queen.
When the weapon failed to fire, Francis fled the scene and disappeared into crowds in nearby Green Park.
Immediately after the event, the then-Prime Minister Robert Peel – widely regarded as the father of modern British policing – agreed to help in identifying the culprit.
Clearly, that wasn’t enough as, when Victoria and Albert decided to ride out again the next day, escorted by only two outrider equerries, John Francis took his chance at killing the monarch once again.
A broadside on the assassination attempt on Queen Victoria after John Francis’ arrest
While some may say the decision was foolish, the famously stubborn Queen Victoria refused to be confined to Buckingham Palace until the perpetrator was caught, rightly believing the best way to flush him out was to leave.
The royal pair were no doubt nervous but, unbeknownst to Francis, the crowds watching the royal pair pass by were infiltrated with plain-clothed Metropolitan police officers. After firing his gun and missing – again – the attempted-killer was wrestled to the ground by law enforcement, just five paces away from the carriage containing Victoria and Albert.
The hapless would-be-assassin was initially sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but the Queen later showed mercy towards him, commuting the sentence to banishment for life. Francis lived out the rest of his 63 years in Australia, remaining there until his death in 1885.
Remarkably, Francis’ two attempts on the Queen’s life were not isolated incidents.
An illustration from c.1840 depicts Victoria and Albert on one of their regular rides around London
Just two years before, in June 1840, 18-year-old barkeep Edward Oxford fired his duelling pistol at Victoria, who was four months pregnant with her first child, also called Victoria. Just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, Oxford fired twice at the monarch but missed both times – the second down to Victoria’s quick decision to duck from the assailant.
After the attack, a crowd surrounded the shooter and tackled him to the ground, while Victoria and Albert continued on their planned journey to Hyde Park. At the time, Prince Albert wrote, “We took a short drive through the park, partly to give Victoria a little air, partly also to show the public that we had not, on account of what had happened, lost all confidence in them”.
Edward Oxford, said to be seeking notoriety, was found guilty but insane and spent 24 years in an asylum, later to be deported to Australia.
Despite the concerning attacks, a further five attempts were made on the Queen’s life over her 63 year rule.
Just five weeks later, 17-year-old John William Bean, who was suffering from spinal deformity and was desperate for a new life – even if that meant a life in jail – also shot at the monarch. After his attempt was foiled, he was sentenced to 18 months of hard labour.
Possibly due to increased security around the Queen, the attempted assassinations became much further spaced out, with shots fired in 1849, 1872 and 1882. Only in 1850 did an assailant use something other than a gun while trying to kill Victoria – and, interestingly, it was the only occasion in which she was actually hurt.
Queen Victoria surrounded by her family at a wedding in Coburg, 1893
On 27 June that year, former British Army officer Robert Pate, who struggled with his mental health and was widely known for his manic behaviour, approached the Queen outside Cambridge House in central London, striking her on the forehead with his lightweight cane.
As the crowd dealt with Pate, Victoria found her footing and told onlookers, “I am not hurt” – despite the bruising and black eye that were beginning to show on her face.
Robert Pate was sentenced to seven years in the penal then-colony of Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania.
Despite the numerous attempts on Queen Victoria’s life, she lived to the ripe old age of 81, dying at her residence on the Isle of Wight 22 January 1901. Her reign was longer than any of her predecessors and was only surpassed last year by Queen Elizabeth II, who spent 70 years and 214 days on the British throne.
This is the year of late architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha at Casa da Arquitectura, in Matosinhos, northern Portugal. Two exhibitions dedicated to the Brazilian Pritsker opened to the public.
“I think it was the best exhibition I have seen of Paulo’s work, because in addition to being complete, it’s been very well taken care of… the photos, the models. I have never seen anything like this”, says Helene Afanasieff, the widow of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, one of the greatest Brazilian architects, who died in 2021.
Helene can’t hide her emotion. She has just attended, with her children and dozens of guests, the pre-opening of two exhibitions dedicated to the Brazilian Pritzker at Casa da Arquitectura (House of Architecture), in Matosinhos, northern Portugal.
Helene Afanasieff married Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 1974
Four years ago, the Brazilian architect donated the totality of his archives to the Casa da Arquitectura.
Helene recalls the controversy caused in Brazil by her husband’s decision: “You cannot imagine. The USP (University of São Paulo), the people in Brazil, were very offended”. But she says that her husband just replied: “I know how the collections are conserved at FAU-USP (The Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo). They are kept in tubes in the middle of the corridor. I am sure that Portugal will take good care of it”.
Paul is not here anymore, but Helene thinks he wouldn’t regret his decision.
Two exhibitions dedicated to Paulo Mendes da Rocha opened to the public on 26 May
“Geography is the first architecture”
Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s work over seven decades is revealed in the exhibition “Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha”, in the main gallery of Casa da Arquitectura. An unprecedented extent has been extracted from the immense collection he donated to the Portuguese institution.
“We chose to work on the theme of geography, saying that this is the first architecture. When man arrives at a place and decides to implant his humanity, his daily life, his poetry there, that is the first architecture. All of us are architects in some way”, says Vanessa Grossman, co-curator of the exhibition along with Jean-Louis Cohen.
Vanessa Grossman and Jean-Louis, curator of the exhibition “Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha”
Twelve major projects are featured from their origins to their current state, from Butantã House (1964-1967), in São Paulo, to some of his latest projects, like the National Coach Museum (2008-2015), in Lisbon, or Sesc 24 de Maio (2001-2017), in São Paulo.
Sesc 24 is one of Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s projects in focus at the exhibition
“Throughout his troubled career, which was marked by the dictatorship, and despite everything, he managed to make projects that range from true domestic experiments, like the house that became a space of invention for him, to a public school on the outskirts of São Paulo, where recreation gained a very broad dimension, but also apartment buildings and cultural facilities”, says Grossman.
The exhibition features 138 original drawings, original models and eight new models produced for this event, along with ten videos made for the exhibition about the architect’s featured works. There are also 44 original drawings by Flávio Motta related to the exhibition project of the Osaka Pavilion, which were censored by the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985).
His architecture was very austere, very respectful of this economy of means, but very poetic.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha won the competition for Brazil’s pavilion at Expo’70 in Osaka
“His architecture was very austere, very respectful of this economy of means, but very poetic. So, there was this tension between poetics and austerity, which I think runs through his work, which is manifested, for example, in the beauty of the drawings, but also in the models he made out of paper”, highlights the curator.
Anyone who comes here and doesn’t know Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s work will practically discover the history of Brazil.
Breaking the association with concrete and metal
“I think he is an architect very much associated with the language of concrete and, later on, he experimented a lot with metal, but I think his work goes beyond this issue of matter and materiality,” explains co-curator Grossman. “I think that for him concrete was an opportunity, it was a field of invention, it was a technological field that would bring infrastructure.”
Grossman says that she and her colleague Jean-Louis Cohen “wanted to break this simplistic association between his architecture and concrete” in this exhibition. In fact, she thinks that “the great substance that runs through the exhibition is really water, the water of his childhood, of his father, who was a naval architecture engineer and he was very marked by the port experience, as he was born In Vitória” (on 25 October, 1928).
The exhibition will be on display until February 2024
“In Brazil, road transport has created a chaotic urbanism and an occupation of territory that is very irrational. So, he always talked about reversing the course of disaster through this reconciliation between cities and waters, which is somehow ecological thinking,” continues Grossman. “For some it is difficult to associate Paulo with ecology, but this issue between culture and nature is really very characteristic of his thinking and his buildings were, shall we say, a critical approach to the world”.
“Anyone who comes here and doesn’t know Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s work will practically discover the history of Brazil, the history of a very committed architect, who was very anchored in his adoptive city, São Paulo, despite coming from a port city, which is Vitória”, she concludes.
According to Jean-Louis Cohen, “this is not the building that Paulo made, but the building that made Paulo”
Talking with Paulo Mendes da Rocha
In the Casa da Arquitectura’s Gallery we can find another exhibition entitled “Paulo: Beyond Drawing – Talking with Paulo Mendes da Rocha”, curated by Marta Moreira and Rui Furtado.
Moreira shared her “immense joy and emotion” for having worked on what she described as a very rich process, having talked to many people who knew the architect, to get to know “the enchanting universe of Paulo’s ideas and work”.
“We were concerned with showing people in general that there was a very coherent, very consistent, very constant speech that guided Paulo’s life and, therefore, his work,” says Moreira.
Curators of the exhibition “Paulo: Beyond Drawing – Talking with Paulo Mendes da Rocha”
“We kept putting together small videos from different moments of Paulo’s speeches, whether more formal speeches, classes, or more informal conversations, and that’s how the exhibition was made”, she explains.
The Brazilian co-curator says Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s main principle is “the total negation of the exploitation of one person by the other” and this is reflected in his architecture, for example, “in building a city for all”.
“In this exhibition, we wanted people to be able to hear him”, says Portuguese co-curator Rui Furtado. “We wanted people to really hear him talking about what guided his life and what guided his life were very simple things and they were all linked to a concept that was the continuity of the human species on the planet. And he uses this concept as a criterion for the options and choices in his life”.
“Paulo: Beyond Drawing – Talking with Paulo Mendes da Rocha”
Parallel Programmes in Lisbon, São Paulo and New York
There is a parallel programme, curated by Nuno Sampaio, Catherine Otondo and Vanessa Grossman, that includes debates, conferences and site visits, with the most diverse personalities from the world of architecture who have crossed paths, directly or indirectly, with Paulo Mendes da Rocha.
The events will take place in Portugal, Brazil and the US.
A 456-page catalogue has been published in two independent versions, Portuguese and English, with critical essays by leading Brazilian, European and North American scholars revisiting the work of Paulo Mendes da Rocha. There is also an interview with the Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, by the curators Jean-Louis Cohen and Vanessa Grossman.
The two exhibitions dedicated to Paulo Mendes da Rocha in Casa da Arquitectura (House of Architecture), in Matosinhos, northern Portugal,will be open until February 2024.
Temasek wrote down the entirety of its investment in FTX in November.
Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, one of its sovereign wealth funds, has pledged to take “collective accountability” for its failed $275 million investment in collapsed crypto exchange FTX.
In a statement released Monday morning, the fund said there was “fraudulent conduct intentionally hidden from investors, including Temasek.”
“Although there was no misconduct by the investment team in reaching their investment recommendation, the investment team and senior management, who are ultimately responsible for investment decisions made, took collective accountability and had their compensation reduced,” Temasek Chairman Lim Boon Heng said in a statement posted to its website.
Days after FTX collapsed in November, the fund said it had written off the entirety of its investment. In November, Temasek said that the $210 million investment, which accounted for 1% of FTX International, and $65 million for 1.5% of FTX.US, represented 0.09% of the firm’s net portfolio value of $293.5 billion (SGD 403 billion) from last year.
At the time, Temasek claimed that it did eight months of due diligence on FTX, reviewing its audited financial statements, analyzing regulatory risk, and cyber security threats.
Post-FTX, Temasek said that intends to refine its investment appraisal procedure, especially for rapidly growing firms.
Temasek reiterated that it does not plan to invest in cryptocurrencies and said it will be cautious when considering new investments in the blockchain space.
FTX was the only investment Temasek had in a crypto exchange.
During the heydays of FTX it was accessible to users based in Singapore, while Binance, its chief rival, was blocked.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) added Binance to the Investor Alert List in September 2021, yet made no such move on Binance. MAS later said this was because Binance directly solicited Singaporean customers, and offered trades in Singapore dollar, which was not the case for FTX.
The mining firm, which has been embroiled in several legal battles, describes an elaborate fraud scheme for a $150 million contract.
New York crypto miner Coinmint alleged two semiconductor companies set up an “elaborate deception” to lure the miner into a $150 million purchase agreement, in a lawsuit seeking over $23 million in damages.
Coinmint alleged that bitcoin technology firm Katena Computing and semiconductor designer company DX Corr set up a scheme to convince it to buy up to $150 million of bitcoin mining machines that Katena couldn’t and didn’t plan to deliver on, according to a lawsuit filed with a court in California’s Santa Clara County Superior Court on Jan. 26.
Under the scheme, Katena “improperly influenced, bribed or incentivized co-conspirators,” including one unnamed person within the mining firm, for a $150 million purchase of bitcoin mining machines, Coinmint alleged.
The lawsuit alleges fraud, breach of contract and fiduciary duty, as well as aiding and abetting against DX Corr and its executives as well as former Coinmint employees. Coinmint is asking for “actual, compensatory and consequential damages, including but not limited to the $23 million,” that it deposited for the sale, as well as punitive and exemplary damages.
“Katena is in binding arbitration concerning Coinmint’s breach of contract and is seeking damages caused by Coinmint’s failure to pay. Katena is eager to talk openly and factually about this dispute but will honor the arbitration process and its confidentiality requirements. When we can talk more openly, we will,” said a spokesperson for Katena.
DX Corr filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit earlier this month, saying Coinmint didn’t sufficiently bring any claims to support its allegations against the semiconductor firm.
Coinmint is no stranger to litigation. Its two cofounders fought over the firm’s ownership. Coinmint filed a complaint with the New York Public Service Commission against the utility of Plattsburgh, where it operates, to avoid paying a deposit related to its electricity use. It was also involved in a tax fraud case in Puerto Rico, where it is headquartered, that was settled under a confidentiality agreement, said a source close to the matter.
Coinmint denied the existence of the alleged tax fraud case and declined to comment on this story.
Court records show the municipality of San Juan sued Coinmint in March 2022, and a judge known for their tax expertise was assigned to the case. The court did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for the complaint at the time of publication.
DX Corr did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Back in 2021, an unnamed Coinmint employee initiated conversations over the purchase of equipment. “Katena engaged in an elaborate deception” to get Coinmint’s founder and CEO Ashton Soniat on board with [claims] that it ‘truly possessed a revolutionary chip design that would disrupt the Bitcoin mining world,’” the lawsuit said.
The unnamed individual was the Coinmint chief financial officer at the time. According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a LinkedIn, a person named Michael Maloney was Coinmint’s CFO at the time. Maloney declined CoinDesk’s request for comment through LinkedIn.
Katena was dangling an offer for the position of CFO and equity as part of the plot to Maloney, said the lawsuit.
The then-CFO asked Katena to recommend a semiconductor expert to perform due diligence on the machines. But Katena suggested Robert Bleck as an independent observer, even though he was in fact in collusion with DX Corr executive and Katena minority shareholder Sagar Reddy, Coinmint alleged. Bleck was Reddy’s “b***h,” the lawsuit read.
Bleck misrepresented Katena’s semiconductor design and production capabilities to the Coinmint CFO, who then tried to convince CEO Soniat.
Soniat signed a sales contract in May 2021 which “obliged Coinmint to pay Katena $150 million for miners without security or customary protection” according to Katena.
Katena also used the contract to try to get funding from investors, including investment bank JP Morgan, said the lawsuit.
When the CFO left Coinmint, two other individuals took the role of convincing Soniat to continue sending deposit payments. The two were also planning a hostile takeover of Coinmint and eventually parted ways with the miner.
Coinmint ultimately sent deposit payments of $23.4 million to Katena with no contractual protections and allegedly received nothing.
