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Article: The future of bitcoin with Max Keiser, plus the US’s bombing addiction, and surveillance capitalism

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The future of bitcoin with Max Keiser, plus the US’s bombing addiction, and surveillance capitalism

RT NEws,  19 March 2021

Max Keiser is Lee Camp’s guest this week, for a conversation about bitcoin. Keiser argues that bitcoin has the potential to change the world in a progressive direction by replacing government-controlled fiat currencies and democratizing the economy. They discuss the future of bitcoin, market manipulation by the oligarchs at the top of the system, how cryptocurrencies can make imperialist wars irrelevant, and the real inflation rate.

After that, Lee explores the results of a new study by the women’s peace organization CODEPINK, which found that, over the past 20 years, the US has dropped an average of 46 bombs a day.

Finally, Natalie McGill reports on the surveillance system Flock, which is similar to the Amazon Ring, but offers extra, creepier methods of invading the privacy of your neighbors. She also looks into a new web search engine from the browser Brave, which allows you to surf anonymously, block third-party vendors from scraping your info, and prioritize independent news sites in search results.

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Article: Why Is Everyone (Still) Talking About GameStop Stock?

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Why Is Everyone (Still) Talking About GameStop Stock?

Keith Noonan, 19 March 2021

GameStop (NYSE:GME) has to be 2021’s most interesting stock. The video game retailer started to pick up momentum ahead of the launch of new game consoles from Sony and Microsoft last year, and over the past two months, short-squeeze mania and other big developments have led to incredible swings for the the company’s share price.

GameStop’s stock climbed as high as $483 per share during the height of short-squeeze mania. While the stock briefly returned to trading in the range of $50 per share, it’s bounced back once again and traded at $201.75 at Thursday’s close. That price represents a 971% increase year to date and a 4,715% increase from the $4.19 share price the stock had one year ago.

Why is GameStop surging, and what comes next?

How did we get here?
The start of GameStop’s improbable, supercharged rally can be traced back to the introduction of Sony’s PlayStation 5 console and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S platforms in 2020. New console launches have historically led to a cyclical upcycle for GameStop’s business and stock performance.

Pricing momentum created by the new hardware launches was further intensified by news that activist investor and Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen was amassing a large stake in the company and would advocate for pushing the business toward an e-commerce focus.

From there, Reddit’s WallStreetBets group began championing the stock as a potential target for a huge short squeeze. Social media users noticed that enormous short interest had amassed against GameStop — and that a massive run for the stock could potentially be generated through a bit of favorable news and coordinated buying.

Prior to the first major short squeeze, GameStop had about 50 million shares of its stock outstanding. At the same time, roughly 70 million shares of the company’s stock had been sold short — meaning that investors had placed bets against more shares of the company’s stock than actually existed.

Short interest exceeding the company’s actual outstanding share count was made possible through a practice called naked short selling, which allows bets to be placed against shares that haven’t actually been borrowed. WallStreetBets members wound up being right about the squeeze, and GameStop bulls notched incredible gains as short-sellers were forced to buy back the stock at elevated levels in hopes of avoiding massive losses.

A combination of continued short-squeeze momentum and indications that the company would be aggressively pursuing its pivot to online retail have added new chapters to the story of GameStop’s incredible rally, and it currently stands as one of the best-performing stocks of the year. Cohen has been appointed chairman of a new committee to accelerate the business’s online retail push, a bounce for the stock has once again attracted new short interest, and the GameStop saga rages on.

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Article: Prosecutor: Alleged money launderer Ian Freeman holds $1.6 million in Bitcoins

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Prosecutor: Alleged money launderer Ian Freeman holds $1.6 million in Bitcoins

Mark Hayward New Hampshire Union Leader, 19 March 2021

CONCORD — Free-Keene leader Ian Freeman has accessed $1.66 million worth of Bitcoins and had $178,000 in cash in his safe when his house was raided by federal authorities this week, prosecutors said on Friday.

Federal prosecutors also said Freeman has access to gold, silver, and possibly other liquid assets and cryptocurrencies. Freeman — who faces eight felony charges including money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy — could tap those assets and use them to flee if a judge releases him on bail, prosecutors warned.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Georgina MacDonald voiced those concerns during an hour-plus bail hearing streamed live Friday from U.S. District Court in Concord.

The hearing ended with Judge Magistrate Andrea Johnstone deferring a decision and promising a written order as soon as possible.

On Tuesday, the FBI arrested Freeman and five others who are part of the libertarian Free Keene movement on charges related to a Bitcoin-dollar exchange system they ran through churches they were closely affiliated with.

Freeman is the only one to face charges of money laundering and operating a continuing financial crimes enterprise, which call for mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years.

MacDonald termed Freeman a sophisticated cybercriminal.

Close to 70 people, including media, FBI agents and some with cryptic names, logged on for the hearing. Freeman participated via video feed from Merrimack County jail.

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Article: Current Attempts To Define Regulator Roles in Cryptocurrency Enforcement Actions

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Current Attempts To Define Regulator Roles in Cryptocurrency Enforcement Actions

Kenneth M. Breen and Phara A. Guberman, 19 March 2021

On March 5, 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged John McAfee and his former employee, Jimmy Gale Watson, with conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering charges in connection with his cryptocurrency activities—specifically McAfee’s Twitter statements touting various cryptocurrencies and his false and misleading statements concerning personal investments or other involvement with those same cryptocurrencies. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have filed civil charges against McAfee and his former colleague in separate parallel actions, each based on a different aspect of McAfee’s alleged scheme. This case and the expected upcoming congressional task force on cryptocurrencies are likely to provide the market with more clarity on how coins and projects will be treated in investigations, including whether they can be treated as securities or commodities and the relative roles of the SEC and CFTC.

In the McAfee case, the first alleged part of the scheme is a pump-and-dump. A pump-and-dump scheme generally involves a party or entity acquiring a position in a financial instrument and then artificially inflating the value of that instrument before selling at an inflated price. In this case, McAfee and his team allegedly bought large quantities of various less popular than Bitcoin but publicly traded cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin, Reddcoin, and Verge. McAfee, a public figure of sorts because of his anti-virus software and social media following, then publicly endorsed and recommended a particular cryptocurrency on Twitter. When the value of that cryptocurrency increased, McAfee and his team sold their investments, earning a cumulative profit of approximately $2 million. According to the indictment, McAfee liquidated many of his cryptocurrency holdings through New York Stock-Exchange-based companies, implicating various securities laws.

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Article: UPDATE 1-Italian court sentences Popolare Vicenza managers to jail over bank’s collapse

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UPDATE 1-Italian court sentences Popolare Vicenza managers to jail over bank’s collapse

Reuters Staff, 19 March 2021

VICENZA, Italy, March 19 (Reuters) – An Italian judge on Friday sentenced four executives of former cooperative bank Popolare di Vicenza to jail for market manipulation and obstruction of regulators following the 2017 collapse of the Veneto-based lender.

Reading out the sentences at the end of a trial lasting some two years, judge Debora De Stefani said the court had sentenced former President Gianni Zonin to six-and-a-half years in prison.

Former executive Emanuele Giustini was given a jail term of six years and three months, while former managers Paolo Marin and Andrea Piazzetta were both given six-year prison terms.

Lawyers of the four convicted managers could not be reached for comment.

Italy liquidated Popolare di Vicenza and regional peer Veneto Bank in June 2017, selling their good assets for 1 euro to Intesa Sanpaolo, while state-owned loan manager AMCO took on 18 billion euros ($21.42 billion) in troubled debts from the two regional banks.

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Article: GameStop stock surge lingo: Here’s what Reddit’s WallStreetBets vocabulary means

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GameStop stock surge lingo: Here’s what Reddit’s WallStreetBets vocabulary means

Katie Conner, 19 March 2021

Reddit’s community, WallStreetBets, is still assisting in the rise of GameStop’s stock, which is currently sitting at $272 per share and even hit an all-time high last week. Reddit users are battling it out with Wall Street to keep GameStop’s stock prices soaring while Wall Street expected a crash. Small investors are using Reddit communities to drive “meme stocks,” causing short sales and https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortsqueeze.asp. And it’s not just GameStop. Other companies, like AMC and Nokia, have also been affected by the coordinated surge.

No, this doesn’t mean you should necessarily drop everything and fully invest in the stock of the moment. Some are calling the market manipulation a “Ponzi scheme,” and the stock price will likely even out once the hullabaloo dies down.

In fact, broker TD Ameritrade restricted trading of the GameStop and AMC stocks on Jan. 26 and continues to post an advisory note to clients about market volatility. Trading app Robinhood followed suit on Jan. 27 in response to the runaway growth — the company got itself into trouble by restricting stock trades and will be closely reviewed by the SEC (It’s currently limiting buys on AMC and GameStop stocks). The White House has said it’s monitoring the situation.

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Article: UPDATED | Lordstown Motors now facing class-action lawsuit as stock slips another 14 percent

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UPDATED | Lordstown Motors now facing class-action lawsuit as stock slips another 14 percent

Justin Dennis, 18 March 2021

“I don’t think anyone thought that we had actual orders, right? That’s just not the nature of this business,” Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns said during an interview this morning on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. is now facing a class action lawsuit from investors alleging executives delivered misleading statements about the company and committed securities violations.

Attorney Drew Legando of Cleveland law firm Merriman, Legando, Williams and Klang LLC filed the suit Monday in Ohio’s Northern District federal court on behalf of Lordstown Motors shareholder Matthew Rico.

Rico purchased 24 shares of Lordstown Motors (NASDAQ: RIDE) between Feb. 18 and March 5, paying in total about $540, according to a shareholder certification filed alongside the complaint. The stock has lost nearly half its value since Rico’s first purchase, which he made just a week after the stock had reached a nearly five-month peak.

At a 47 percent loss, Rico’s shares lost about $250 in value, more than half of which was lost after the short-seller firm Hindenburg Research published a damaging report on the state of the company and accused executives of misleading investors.

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Article: $COTI — the undeniable SCAM run by criminals — Investigation Report

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$COTI — the undeniable SCAM run by criminals — Investigation Report

api3cloud, 18 March 2021

Part 1
‘’The criminals’’

I start this article with a disclaimer that this investigative research would not be possible without the help of many. A combined effort on Reddit, Discord, Telegram and Twitter to put together information of undeniable official evidences that COTI is in fact an orchestrated fraud operated by Israeli well known Binary Options criminals. All information provided is backed by public sources and data. This is not FUD. These are undeniable public evidences that the COTI team tried to hide from the public for a long time, the victims of the soon to be known as one of the biggest crypto scams ever seen, need to be informed and law authorities need to act fast.

In this article I will deep dive on the extensive criminal background of COTI team.

When was COTI created? In 2017, the exact month Israel authorities banned Binary Options the COTI team needed the next scam to pull. ICOS were hot at the time, easy money and easy preys.

SIMONA WEINGLASS: Twitter @simonaweinglass /// Email simona@timesofisrael.com

A reputable white collar crime and corruption investigative journalist for the biggest newspaper of Israel, and the responsible for taking down COTI founders Binary Options scams back in 2017 reports

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Article: American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. Announces Pricing of $100,000,000 Initial Public Offering

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American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. Announces Pricing of $100,000,000 Initial Public Offering

ACCESSWIRE , 18 March 2021

American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. (the “Company”) announced today that it priced its initial public offering of 10,000,000 units at $10.00 per unit. The units will be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market (“Nasdaq”) and will begin trading tomorrow, Thursday, March 18, 2021, under the ticker symbol “AMAOU”. Each unit consists of one share of the Company’s Class A common stock and one-half of one redeemable warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. Only whole warrants are exercisable and will trade. Once the securities comprising the units begin separate trading, shares of the Class A common stock and warrants are expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the symbols “AMAO” and “AMAOW,” respectively. Continue reading “Article: American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. Announces Pricing of $100,000,000 Initial Public Offering”

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Article: ASC orders lifetime bans, penalties in Bluforest pump-and-dump scheme

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ASC orders lifetime bans, penalties in Bluforest pump-and-dump scheme

The Canadian Press, 18 March 2021

CALGARY — The Alberta Securities Commission has ordered permanent market access bans against Cem (Jim) Can, Charles Michael Miller and Bluforest Inc. after finding they acted fraudulently in a pump-and-dump stock market manipulation scheme.

In its sanctioning decision, the provincial regulator also ordered the men to pay a total of about $2.67 million in penalties, costs and returns of ill-gotten gains.

An ASC panel ruled last August that Can and Miller engaged in a deliberate fraud, that Bluforest made misrepresentations and that Can illegally distributed securities to Alberta investors while engaging in activities designed to set an artificial price for Bluforest securities.

In its decision, it says the scheme originated in 2010, when Can acquired control over Greenwood Gold Resources Inc., whose shares traded through US OTC Markets Group, then negotiated a framework in 2012 to repurpose it as a carbon-credit marketing company and changed the name.

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Email: Currency Rigging Is Treason, Bigger Than Cash Settlement Crime and Naked Short Crime

Letter

Alert Reader writes in:

Currency rigging is vastly larger than cash settlement which is vastly larger than naked short selling (counterfeit shares never delivered). Currency rigging is clearly treason — collusion with foreign governments to sabotage the US economy — interest rigging is in there as well. Cash settlement is not understood by most as being hugely bigger crime — purchased assets are not delivered! Then there is naked short selling.  You are missing two thirds of the treason and crime!

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Article: Think twice before signing ‘2021 Hong Kong Charter’

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Think twice before signing ‘2021 Hong Kong Charter’

SCMP Editorial, 17 March 2021

A campaign seeking to unite Hongkongers based overseas and the international community to fight what it calls suppression of the city’s freedoms and autonomy had barely made a ripple before being branded “illegal” by the Security Bureau.

The “2021 Hong Kong Charter” will not just make its founder, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, and others liable to breaching the national security law, but also whoever else signs up. Such a move is likely to be seen as foreign collusion.

The 25-point document contains statements on Hong Kong, mainland China and the international community and calls for the “liberation” of the city and the end of China’s one-party rule – slogans that are now deemed in violation of the law banning acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

It also mentions issues in relation to Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan, and urges the international community to “stand together, to safeguard democratic values under the threat of totalitarianism”.

The city’s development has always been at the heart of many overseas Chinese with Hong Kong roots, even more so in the wake of the political and economic turmoils in recent years. It would therefore be unsurprising if the campaign attracts some support abroad and at home.
Taiwan
But people should think twice before signing up to the document. The Security Bureau has warned that it would be an offence for anyone planning or participating in acts that undermine sovereignty or colluding with foreign forces to sanction or engage in hostile activities against Hong Kong and the mainland. The extraterritorial effect of the law makes those participating from overseas also liable.

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Article: Stop the Game!: How To Chill Bubbles Sensibly

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Stop the Game!: How To Chill Bubbles Sensibly

John C. Coffee Jr., 17 March 2021

Much of the excited journalism on GameStop has focused on its asserted “Democratization” of the markets or the new “populism” sweeping Wall Street. This sort of commentary is the product of journalists being on tight publication deadlines and willing to generalize based on a data sample of one. Those of us who take a longer-term view see it differently: Bubbles are bad; GameStop was a bubble; and the influences that caused it (which were indeed new and novel) need to be chilled. Those who disagree with the last sentence should probably stop reading here.

But how you chill a bubble is not a simple question. Many commentators have unrealistic solutions: (1) Prosecute everyone (or at least those on Reddit) for manipulation; and (2) subject websites to tight regulatory controls. Such solutions, proposed by those who can reach legal conclusions faster than the average knee can jerk, face formidable obstacles. First, manipulation is a crime of intent that requires the actor to attempt willfully to move a stock price (up or down) to an “artificial” price that the actor knows is different than that which would be reached by the normal intersection of supply and demand in a fully informed market. Currently, the circuits are split, but both the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit and D.C. Circuit insist that the defendant must intentionally send a false pricing signal (such as a wash sale or a factually false statement). See Fezzandi v. Bear Stearns & Co., 777 F.3d 566 (2d Cir. 2015); Koch v. SEC, 793 F.3d 147 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Second, the First Amendment largely precludes any attempt to shut down social media. In addition, §230 of the Communications Decency Act gives immunity to websites, such as Reddit, for what their users say on them. Beyond that, mere statements of opinion—even manic opinions—are not fraudulent. Most of the lost souls on WallStreetBets sound like true believers, not cynical manipulators, and their prediction that GameStop was “going to the moon” were silly, but not fraudulent. According to Motley Fool, the average investor in a Robinhood account had an account balance (in 2020) between $1,000 and $5,000. A colleague tells me that his account balance on Draft Kings (a different betting venue) is greater than that. In short, Robinhood’s investors are not big-time and are probably feeling their losses keenly at this point.

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Article: VIDEO | After Hindenburg Research report, Lordstown Motors set to face investors today

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VIDEO | After Hindenburg Research report, Lordstown Motors set to face investors today

Justin Dennis, 17 March 2021

Lordstown Motors has vowed to refute last week’s scathing short-seller report, which called demand for its Endurance all-electric pickup truck a “mirage” and claimed the company has been misleading investors.

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. executives are expected to address the company’s investors during their end-of-year financial report this afternoon.

The report comes days after Hindenburg Research, a short-selling stock market research firm, delivered a damaging deep-dive into the Voltage Valley leader, claiming that its investors are being misled; that its all-electric pickup truck the Endurance is actually years away from production, despite executives’ September 2021 target; and that its book of about 100,000 non-binding pre-orders for the vehicle “are largely fictitious and used as a prop to raise capital and confer legitimacy.”

Lordstown Motors on Monday vowed to refute the report “in due time,” and a spokesperson last week promised a “thorough” statement. CEO Steve Burns, addressing reporters during a Monday tour of the plant where dozens of test vehicles are currently being built, reassured the Endurance is on-track.

“Whatever anybody thinks of us in the world, the main thing is we are going to be the first electric pickup truck in the United States, full-size, and that starts in September,” Burns said, as reported by The Business Journal.

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