berg80
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- Oct 28, 2017
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Trump transition chief under fire for conflicts
Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street CEO heading up Donald Trumpâs transition operation, is facing accusations from some Trump insiders that he is improperly mixing his business interests with his duties standing up a potential administration.
The alarm among Trumpâs loyalists has been compounded by the belief that Lutnick has tried to sideline a host of aides and advisers who worked in the first Trump administration in hopes of instead filling the second administration with new people who could be personally beneficial to him.
The concerns were described by two people close to Trump, who said they have risen all the way to the ex-president himself. They have prompted speculation that Lutnick might be demoted or made to report to another Trump loyalist on transition matters.
Lutnickâs camp rejects the double-dealing allegations and suggests they are a smear pushed by some ex-Trump officials associated with Project 2025 â the now-defunct Heritage Foundation project that has become a political albatross for Trump â who are upset with Lutnick for refusing to consider them for key positions.
So what did big fat Donnie do?
Trump picks Lutnick to be Commerce secretary
Despite.........
The criminalâs âgo-to cryptocurrencyâ has a new friend in the White House
In July, Howard Lutnick, the pugnacious boss of broker Cantor Fitzgerald, regaled an audience of crypto devotees in Nashville with tales of his early days exploring the world of digital currencies.â I met every criminal whoâs now in prison,â the 63-year-old joked, referring to his encounters with various youthful crypto executives now serving lengthy jail sentences for fraud. âAnd then,â he said, âI met the people who owned Tether.â In contrast to other industry players, Lutnick said, Tetherâs co-founder Giancarlo Devasini, an Italian-born former plastic surgeon, was able to prove he was running a legitimate business. Since then the business has boomed. Profits at Tether, which now administers the most traded cryptocurrency in the world, surged to $5.2bn in the first half of this year. Despite only having around 100 employees, those earnings put Tether on a similar scale to some of the worldâs largest banks â a billion more than Barclays and a billion less than Morgan Stanley â largely derived from interest on its reserves accumulated by taking in dollars in exchange for tokens.But at the same time, according to enforcement officials, prosecutors and information from multiple current and recent indictments, Tether has cemented its place as the go-to cryptocurrency for international criminals. The eye-popping constellation of gangsters and sanctions evaders using Tether includes cocaine cartels, North Korean hackers, Iranian and Russian spies, and fentanyl smugglers.

The criminalâs âgo-to cryptocurrencyâ has a new friend in the White House
Howard Lutnick has defended the stablecoin company which has been used by gangs and US adversaries
There appears to be a theme emerging here.
Trumpâs pick to lead NASA made a big bet on crypto while going to space on the side
President-elect Donald Trumpâs pick to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, is a 41-year-old space enthusiast, who just months ago commanded the worldâs first all-civilian mission to reach orbit.
Heâs also a crypto billionaire.
Isaacman is the founder of Shift4, a fintech company that provides secure payment processing solutions for businesses. The companyâs stock price has jumped almost 40% this year, lifting its market cap to $9.3 billion. Isaacman started the business in 1999 at age 16 and took it public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
In a Dec. 4 post on his Truth Social platform announcing the nomination, Trump wrote, âJared has demonstrated exceptional leadership, building a trailblazing global financial technology company.â
Why is Donald Trump talking up crypto?
President-elect Donald Trump has said many negative things about cryptocurrencies. Their value is âbased on thin air,â he remarked; they can âfacilitate unlawful behavior.â Bitcoin âseems like a scamâ he told Fox Business in 2021. âI donât like it because itâs another currency competing against the dollar.â Things change. This year Mr. Trump proposed that âif bitcoin is going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way.â
There are plausible explanations for the change of heart. None, however, are reassuring, given cryptocurrenciesâ track record. In 15 years, they have proven especially useful for illicit activities, and not any better than conventional currencies for much else. Either Mr. Trump has conducted some novel â and faulty â policy analysis, or he is seeking personal gain.
One motivation for Mr. Trumpâs crypto turn seems clear: During his campaign, he appealed to the burgeoning crypto lobby, a motley group of techy libertarians and opportunists seeking easy money to whom he promised a national crypto reserve (which would offer crypto speculators an opportunity to monetize their investment on the U.S. governmentâs dime). Another concerning possibility: Mr. Trump himself appears to be trying to cash in on cryptocurrency, raising a new set of questions about the conflicts of interest he will bring to the Oval Office.
In mid-September, weeks before the election, Mr. Trump announced his newest business project: World Liberty Financial, a somewhat nebulous venture that will provide a platform for people to borrow, lend and earn interest on crypto.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/27/crypto-bitcoin-trump-conflict-interest/
But hey, I'm sure it's all just a coincidence.