Crypto

It’s the bitcoin boom, baby! I’m bailing on Beanie Babies and investing bigly! | Opinion

Published

1 year ago

December 6, 2024

Press Room

It’s the bitcoin boom, baby! I’m bailing on Beanie Babies and investing bigly! | Opinion

I haven’t been this excited about obtaining oil-baron-level wealth since the Beanie Babies boom of the mid-1990s.

Great news, fellow dream chasers! Bitcoin is booming and we are all going to be rich!

If you pay attention to mainstream media sources (I don’t), you’ve probably seen headlines like “Bitcoin tops $100,000 as monster 2024 rally reaches new heights” and “Bitcoin breaks $100,000 barrier amid post-election cryptocurrency surge.”

USA TODAY reported: “The price of bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time Thursday amid expectations that Donald Trump will create a friendly regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies when he heads to the White House next year.”

WOO-HOOOO! It’s raining difficult-to-comprehend cryptocurrency that is apparently rooted in nothing but vibes but somehow still exists, according to the anonymous person or persons who created it! Hallelujah!

From Beanie Babies to bitcoin, baby! Let’s get rich.

I haven’t been this excited about obtaining oil-baron-level wealth since the Beanie Babies boom of the mid-1990s.

Back then we were taking sharp investment advice from people who predicted unprecedented returns on plush stuffed animals with names like Nip the Cat, Inky the Octopus and Bongo the Monkey. They knew what they were talking about, as evidenced by my three mortgages and the 37 large plastic bins filled with Beanie Babies that I call my “attic-based retirement.”

But now the bitcoin craze is buoyed by even-more reliable people: con artists. Chief among them, of course, is President-elect Donald Trump, who has made a fortune and become leader of the free world by persuading people to spend $30 on cheap-looking red hats.

If you can’t count on Donald Trump for investment advice, who can you trust?

Trump is all in on crypto, and he touted the bitcoin news Thursday on his social media site, Truth Social: “CONGRATULATIONS BITCOINERS!!! $100,000!!! YOU’RE WELCOME!!!”

Over the first three quarters of this year, Truth Social made $2.6 million in revenue while losing $363 million, and its stock was trading Thursday at about $34 a share compared with the $66-per-share high in March after it hit the stock market. Needless to say, I will walk through fire to follow Trump’s rock-solid instincts and investing advice.

Trump ally Elon Musk, famous both for paying way too much for Twitter so he could destroy it and for creating the overpriced electric car presently burning in my driveway, is also a strong crypto advocate, and he doesn’t seem at all weird or volatile.

If Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy tell me to buy bitcoin, I’m in!

Same with Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has paired with Musk to form the made-up Department of Government Efficiency, which is an acronymic reference to “Dogecoin,” which is another type of pretend currency I don’t need to understand to believe in.

The fast-talking Ramaswamy doesn’t sound at all like someone who would show up on a late-night informational and try to sell me a “forward mortgage” to go with my “reverse mortgage,” or a knockoff ShamWow.

So you better believe I’m going to follow the lead of these not-at-all-self-serving billionaires and ignore the so-called experts and Nobel-prize-winning economists out there saying bitcoin is wildly risky.

Just because bitcoin sounds like a scam and looks like a scam …

Did the U.S. Justice Department seize more than $112 million linked to crypto investment schemes last year? Perhaps.

And did federal prosecutor Martin Estrada say in a statement at the time: “Using the methods of traditional con artists, high-tech fraudsters have taken advantage of the publicity and hype surrounding cryptocurrency to encourage an untold number of Americans to invest in get-rich-quick schemes.”

Yes, sure. But that overlooks my desire to get rich quick, which inherently requires a get-rich-quick scheme. Duh.

Primary currency used by criminals? Where do I sign up?!?

Did Eric Maskin, a Harvard professor and winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in economics, recently tell the Miami Herald that cryptocurrencies are “very far from being a safe investment”? And did he also say: “Cryptocurrencies are a very good way of conducting criminal transactions and hiding them under anonymity”?

Don’t threaten me with a good time, Prof. Maskin! When you say “far from being a safe investment,” I hear, “I don’t want you to invest in this great investment so there’s more of it for me to invest in, sucker.”

Nah, I’m going to go with the guys who will benefit from me believing everything they’re telling me. It’s high time I sink my life savings into a thing that doesn’t technically exist.

And if anything goes wrong, I’ve always got my attic full of Beanie Babies to fall back on. Those things are going to be worth a fortune any day now.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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Crypto

Gemini Titan Enters US Prediction Markets With Yes-or-No Event Contracts

Published

5 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Press Room

Gemini Titan Enters US Prediction Markets With Yes-or-No Event Contracts

Gemini Titan now holds a U.S. license to offer prediction markets, setting up a fierce push for trader liquidity as the platform challenges rivals, draws in new market flow, and builds toward a broader lineup of future derivatives products.

Crypto

Crypto mogul Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison over $40B ‘epic fraud’

Published

17 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Crypto mogul Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison over B ‘epic fraud’

Do Kwon, the South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion in 2022, was sentenced on Thursday to 15 years in prison for for what a judge called an “epic fraud.”

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, who handed down the sentence, sharply rebuked Kwon for repeatedly lying to everyday investors who trusted him with their life savings.

“This was a fraud on an epic, generational scale. In the history of federal prosecutions, there are few frauds that have caused as much harm as you have, Mr. Kwon,” Engelmayer said during a hearing in Manhattan federal court.

Kwon, 34, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna currencies, previously pleaded guilty and admitted to misleading investors about a coin that was supposed to maintain a steady price during periods of crypto market volatility.

He is one of several cryptocurrency moguls to face federal charges after a slump in digital token prices in 2022 prompted the collapse of a number of companies.

Dressed in yellow prison garb, Kwon addressed the court and apologized to his victims, including the hundreds who submitted letters to the court describing the harm they had suffered.

“All of their stories were harrowing and reminded me again of the great losses that I’ve caused. I want to tell these victims that I am sorry,” Kwon said.

Ayyildiz Attila, one of the hundreds of victims who submitted letters to the court, said he lost between $400,000 and $500,000 in the collapse.

“My savings, my future, and the results of years of sacrifice disappeared. I struggled to keep up with payments and responsibilities, and everything I had worked forwas erased,” Attila said.

Kwon’s lawyer Sean Hecker said in an email after the sentencing that Kwon spoke from the heart, expressed genuine remorse and will continue his efforts to make amends.

US Attorney Jay Clayton in Manhattan said in a statement following the hearing that Kwon devised elaborate schemes to inflate the value of his cryptocurrencies and fled accountability when his crimes caught up to him.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of at least 12 years in prison, saying the crash of Kwon’s Terra cryptocurrency caused billions of dollars in losses and triggered a cascade of crises in the crypto market.

Kwon’s lawyers had asked that he be sentenced to no more than five years so he can return to South Korea to face criminal charges.

Prosecutors charged Kwon in January with nine criminal counts for securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering conspiracy.

Kwon was accused of misleading investors in 2021 about TerraUSD, a so-called stablecoin designed to maintain a value of $1. Prosecutors alleged that when TerraUSD slipped below its $1 peg in May 2021, Kwon told investors a computer algorithm known as “Terra Protocol” had restored the coin’s value.

Instead, Kwon arranged for a high-frequency trading firm to secretly buy millions of dollars of the token to artificially prop up its price, according to charging documents.

Kwon pleaded guilty in August to two counts, conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud, and apologized in court for his conduct.

“I made false and misleading statements about why it regained its peg by failing to disclose a trading firm’s role in restoring that peg,” Kwon said at the time. “What I did was wrong.”

Kwon agreed in 2024 to pay $80 million as a civil fine and be banned from crypto transactions as part of a $4.55 billion settlement he and Terraform reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He also faces charges in South Korea. As part of his plea deal, prosecutors will not oppose Kwon’s potential application to be transferred abroad after serving half his US sentence.

Crypto

Robinhood Sets 2026 Crypto Vision With Expanded Global Access

Published

1 day ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Robinhood Sets 2026 Crypto Vision With Expanded Global Access

Robinhood signaled a sweeping 2026 crypto expansion, showcasing accelerating platform growth, wider U.S. and European access, and new products capped by a Layer 2 network aimed at propelling the company deeper into global tokenization and advanced digital-asset trading.