FTX filed for bankruptcy last week, but the cryptocurrency exchange's founder still thinks that he can raise enough money to make users whole, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Mr. Bankman-Fried, alongside a few remaining employees, spent the past weekend calling around in search of commitments from investors to plug a shortfall of up to $8 billion in the hopes of repaying FTX's customers, the people said. The efforts to cover that shortfall have so far been unsuccessful. The Wall Street Journal couldn't determine what Mr. Bankman-Fried is offering in return for any potential cash infusion, or whether any investors have committed.

FTX filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, and Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive of the company. He remains its largest shareholder. The bankruptcy announcement shocked FTX customers who had hoped they could recover assets. Now-deleted tweets from Mr. Bankman-Fried in the days before the filing assured users that the company was "fine." Companies under bankruptcy protection sometimes receive loans meant to help maintain operations. Debtor-in-possession financing means that if companies survive, the first funds they earn will go toward paying down that lifeline. It is less common for a company to try to raise fresh equity capital early on in the bankruptcy process, since debtholders hold priority over any remaining assets.

Department of Justice, announcing through a press release: Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Tyler Hatcher, the Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office ("IRS-CI"), announced today that JAMES ZHONG pled guilty to committing wire fraud in September 2012 when he unlawfully obtained over 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web internet marketplace. ZHONG pled guilty on Friday, November 4, 2022, before United States District Judge Paul G. Gardephe.

On November 9, 2021, pursuant to a judicially authorized premises search warrant of ZHONG's Gainesville, Georgia, house, law enforcement seized approximately 50,676.17851897 Bitcoin, then valued at over $3.36 billion. This seizure was then the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice and today remains the Department's second largest financial seizure ever. The Government is seeking to forfeit, collectively: approximately 51,680.32473733 Bitcoin; ZHONG's 80% interest in RE&D Investments, LLC, a Memphis-based company with substantial real estate holdings; $661,900 in cash seized from ZHONG's home; and various metals also seized from ZHONG's home.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: "James Zhong committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road. For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery. Thanks to state-of-the-art cryptocurrency tracing and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement located and recovered this impressive cache of crime proceeds. This case shows that we won't stop following the money, no matter how expertly hidden, even to a circuit board in the bottom of a popcorn tin."

Faraday Future burned through cash and board seats while its founder fought for control. From a report: The image arrived in Susan Swenson's inbox on a Wednesday evening. Her corporate headshot had been crudely crossed out in digital red ink, and the word "Kill" was written in the bottom left corner. In the hours that followed, some of her colleagues received similar threats, including messages that referenced the recent assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. The menacing emails marked the apex of a months-long fight for control over Faraday Future Intelligent Electric, a Los Angeles, California-based publicly traded electric vehicle startup that once billed itself as the next Tesla. In September, after the death threats, persistent pressure from Faraday's largest shareholders, and a surprising cameo from property giant China Evergrande, Swenson, the executive chair, and three others agreed to leave Faraday's board of directors in a sweeping restructuring.

While it's not known who sent the death threats -- the company has referred them to the FBI -- some leaders inside Faraday believe they were inspired by the boardroom fight recently waged by its largest shareholders, including a group that is partially managed by the startup's founder, exiled Chinese tycoon Jia Yueting. Seven months ago, Faraday's board sidelined Jia, who goes by YT, following an internal probe that examined his influence over day-to-day operations, as well as a series of loans employees made to the startup over the years. Now, he stands to benefit greatly from the impending board shakeup, which will be completed when Faraday holds its delayed annual meeting. He has been named an adviser to the board, and FF Global will have input on all six new members. As Faraday put it in a recent SEC filing, "YT Jia and FF Global have strengthened their already significant influence over the Company." But as YT reclaims power, it is over a company that's under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in relation to the findings of the internal probe -- information the Department of Justice has inquired about, too, according to Faraday. The startup also needs money, fast. After burning through more than $3 billion since it launched eight years ago, Faraday reported just $27 million in cash on Oct. 25th, and says it needs millions more if it hopes to finally ship its elusive SUV.

Core Scientific, one of the world's largest miners of Bitcoin, warned that it may run out of cash by the end of the year and could seek relief through bankruptcy protection. Bloomberg reports: Operating performance and liquidity have been severely impacted by the prolonged drop in the price of Bitcoin, a rise in electricity costs, increased competition and litigation with bankrupt Celsius Networks LLC, the Austin, Texas-based company said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday. Shares of Core Scientific dropped 78% on Thursday, its worst trading day since going public earlier this year through a merger. Bitcoin mining companies such as Core Scientific had recently been increasingly opting to sell equity, resorting to one of their least attractive options to raise money as profits dry up and higher interest rates makes borrowing more expensive. The company entered into a $100 million common stock purchase agreement with B. Riley Principal Capital II in July. Bitcoin has slumped almost 70% since reaching a record high in November 2021.

"We could see similar filings within the sector," said Brian Dobson, an analyst at Chardan Capital, who had a 'buy' rating on the shares. "This is going to weigh on all of the publicly traded crypto miners." Should Core Scientific file for bankruptcy, it would likely be the first large publicly traded Bitcoin miner to do so, Dobson said. Core Scientific said it won't make payments coming due in late October and early November with respect to several of equipment and other financings, including two bridge promissory notes. The company is exploring alternatives, including hiring strategic advisers, raising additional capital or restructuring its existing capital structure. Core Scientific held 24 Bitcoins and approximately $26.6 million in cash as of Thursday. That's compared with 1,051 Bitcoins and about $29.5 million in cash as of September, the company said in the filing. The shares, which traded as much as $14.32 late last year, closed at 22 cents. they've tumbled 98% since the start of the year.

As cryptocurrency prices soared last year, no investor bet more on the sector than Andreessen Horowitz. The timing wasn't good. From a report: The storied venture-capital firm had developed a reputation as Silicon Valley's greatest crypto bull, thanks largely to a 50-year-old partner named Chris Dixon who was one of the earliest evangelists for how the blockchain technology powering cryptocurrencies could change business. His unit was one of the most-active crypto investors last year, and in May announced a $4.5 billion crypto fund, the largest ever for such investments.

The timing wasn't good. Prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have plunged this year in the midst of a broad market downturn, erasing billions of dollars in paper gains for Andreessen's funds. Consumer demand has vanished for some of the firm's most-prized crypto startups, while others are facing increased scrutiny from regulators. Andreessen's flagship crypto fund shed around 40% of its value in the first half of this year, according to people familiar with the matter. That decline is much larger than the 10% to 20% drops recorded by other venture funds, which have largely avoided the risky practice of purchasing volatile cryptocurrencies, according to fund investors. Despite the record cash pile, Andreessen has dramatically slowed the pace of its crypto investments this year.

Last week the Los Angeles Times published a sympathetic portrait of Robbi Jade Lew, the woman facing unproven allegations of cheating in a high-stakes poker match.

This week the newspaper profiled the man making those accusations — Garrett Adelstein, known "as an affable guy who is known for taking even big losses in stride." "Garrett would have reacted normally if his opponent made a good, even heroic, call that cost him $100,000," said Jennifer Shahade, a pro poker player and chess champion. "I think the initial hand, the call and the situation would be suspicious under any circumstances, any gender."
In the profile we learn that Adelstein has 14 years of experience as a professional poker, and is "one of the game's best and most profitable high-stakes cash players, known to viewers of popular casino broadcasts for his loose-aggressive style of no-limit hold 'em and his willingness to buy in for enormous sums of money, bringing as much as $1 million to the table....

"On Sept. 29, Adelstein made the biggest bet of his life: risking his well-respected reputation, and possibly his poker career, when he accused rookie player Robbi Jade Lew of cheating in a $269,000 hand against him on Hustler Casino Live..." Adelstein, 36, hasn't played poker since. Whereas he once spent much of his time studying optimal strategy, reviewing past hands and appearing on streams from Hustler Casino in Gardena and Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, he is now hyper-focused on conducting his own investigation to prove his case. In a more than four-hour interview from his Manhattan Beach home on Tuesday, Adelstein said he was "extremely confident" that he was the target of a cheating ring involving not just Lew but other players and at least one member of the show's production crew. Lew, 37, denied the allegation, which she called "defamatory."

The drama has left Adelstein uncertain when he'll return to the poker table.... Adelstein says he has been cheated before. When he was 26, he was invited to a home game where he bought in for $100,000.... Adelstein said, he laid out his suspicions about the intricacies of the operation to the host and a business partner, and said he would go public with what happened. "They offered me a deal where they would refund me my money in exchange for my silence," he said. "And then they paid me in six installments, once a month, for a six-month period."

The incident, which he relayed on a poker podcast last year, showed Adelstein the darker side of poker and left him cautious.

He never played in a high-stakes home game with strangers again, choosing to exclusively play in casinos, where he reasoned cheating would be less likely. Still, "I'm always looking out for it," he said. "I'm not the world's most trusting guy when it comes to poker."
The article notes how major poker sites were busted 15 years ago for "superuser" accounts with cheating privileges — and a 2019 lawsuit in which dozens of pros sued a player and gambling hall accused of leaking info from the RFID-tagged cards uesd in their livestreams. "When it comes to stream security and these types of games, as professionals we're obviously always on the lookout so it doesn't happen again," poker player Matt Berkey said of the aftermath. "Garrett's one of the biggest players who plays on stream, so he himself is more of a potential target."

"Hustler Casino Live," the streaming show that hosted the now-infamous Sept. 29 game, also uses RFID playing cards. Since its first show aired in August 2021, it has become the world's most-watched poker stream, combining the drama of the game with huge amounts of cash, poker's top players, celebrities and other colorful personalities. "Hustler Casino Live" now has more than 1 million monthly unique viewers and 185,000 subscribers.

The show's games are streamed five days a week on a delay of one to four hours to prevent information from being passed to players live. But now its stream security has been called into question, with players saying tighter protocols need to be implemented. They've raised concerns over the number of employees who had access to the control room where hole cards were being monitored, and a few have said the stream should temporarily shut down while the investigation is ongoing....

"I thought that streamed poker was, at least by comparison to the other options, one of the last safe havens," Adelstein said. "And at this point, I have so little faith in that...."

"Live at the Bike," on which Adelstein has played several times, has been hitting him up since Sept. 29 in the hopes that he will join its stream. But he says he's not in the right headspace for it.

"There's I guess a world in the next several weeks or months where maybe I'm able to process this and want to play a poker game. But at the moment, that's not how I feel," he said.

"I'm not playing poker on a stream again unless I see tangible, noticeable, measurable differences in livestream security," he continued. "That's for my own benefit and it's for the benefit of the poker community at large."

Soon, Apple Card users will be able to open a "new high-yield Savings account," Apple says. There's just one hitch: Apple won't say what interest rate it's offering. There's also no specific timeline for when consumers can access these savings accounts. The Verge reports: Apple has been moving into fintech with the Apple Card, which it partners with Goldman Sachs on. As one of its perks, card users get Daily Cash, Apple's special branding on the more mundane cashback rewards, on their purchases. The promise of this "high-yield" savings account is that cardholders can have their Daily Cash deposited into it "with no fees, no minimum deposits, and no minimum balance requirements," the company says.

Apple, which also offers buy now, pay later services, appears to have decided that competing with tech companies isn't enough. It also wants to compete with banks. Of course, banks generally tell you what the interest rates on their savings accounts are. Anyone who has the account can also deposit funds into the new savings account from a linked bank account or from their existing Apple Cash balance. Once it's set up, all Daily Cash received will automatically be deposited into it, although users can change that to put it directly on the Apple Cash card in the Wallet app.

Incidents of fraud and scams are occurring more often on the popular peer-to-peer payment service Zelle, according to a report issued Monday by the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, giving the public its first glimpse into the growing problems at Zelle. From a report: The report also found that the large banks that partly own Zelle have been reluctant to compensate customers who have been victims of fraud or scams. For instance, less than half of the money customers reported being sent via Zelle without authorization was being reimbursed. Warren, D-Massachusetts, a long-time critic of the big banks, requested data on fraud and scams on Zelle from seven banks starting in April. The report cites data from four banks that tallied 192,878 cases worth collectively $213.8 million in 2021 and the first half of 2022 where a customer claimed they had been fraudulently tricked into making a payment. In only roughly 3,500 cases did those banks reimburse the customer, the report found.

Further, in the cases where it's clear funds had been taken out of customers' accounts without authorization, only 47% of those dollars were ever reimbursed. Since being launched in June 2017, Zelle has become a popular way for bank customers to send money to friends and family. Almost $500 billion in funds were sent via Zelle in 2021, according to Early Warning Services, the company that operates Zelle. Zelle is the banking industry's answer to the growing popularity of peer-to-peer payment services like PayPal, Venmo and the Cash App. The service allows a bank customer to instantaneously send money to a person via their email or phone number, and it will go from one bank account to another. More than 1,700 banks and credit unions offer the service. But the service has also grown more popular with scammers and criminals. Once money is sent via Zelle, it requires a bank's intervention to attempt to get that money back.

Oracle has paid $23 million to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to settle corruption charges that subsidiaries in Turkey, United Arab Emirates and India used "slush funds" to bribe foreign officials to win business. The Register reports: The SEC said on Tuesday that Big Red violated provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) during a three-year period between 2016 and 2019. The cash that was apparently surreptitiously set aside was also spent on paying for foreign officials to attend technology conferences, which breaks Oracle's own internal policies and procedures. And the SEC said that in some instances, it found Oracle staff at the Turkish subsidiary had spent the funds on taking officials' families with them on International conferences or side trips to California.

"The creation of off-books slush funds inherently gives rise to the risk those funds will be used improperly, which is exactly what happened here at Oracle's Turkey, UAE, and India subsidiaries," said Charles Cain, FCPA unit chief at the SEC. "This matter highlights the critical need for effective internal accounting controls throughout the entirety of a company's operations," he added. Oracle, without admitting or denying the findings of the SEC's investigation, has agreed to "cease and desist from committing violations" of the anti-bribery, books and records, and internal accounting controls of the FCPA, said the Commission.

Citing McDonald's shelved meat-free burger trial and a 70% dip in Beyond Meat's stock, The Guardian suggests plant-based meats may not interest Americans as much as investors thought. From the report: Getting meat eaters in the US to adopt plant-based alternatives has proven a challenge. Beyond Meat, which produces a variety of plant-based products, including imitations of ground beef, burgers, sausages, meatballs and jerky, has had a rough 12 months, with its stock dipping nearly 70%. Multiple chains that partnered with the company, including McDonald's, have quietly ended trial launches. In August, the company laid off 4% of its workforce after a slowdown in sales growth. Last week, its chief operating officer was reportedly arrested for biting another man on the nose during a road rage confrontation. It's a dramatic reversal of fortune. Just two years ago, Beyond Meat, its competitor Impossible Foods and the plant-based meat industry at large seemed poised to start a food revolution.

For a time, Wall Street went vegetarian. In 2019 Beyond Meat was valued at over $10 billion, more than Macy's or Xerox. The most bullish investors believed that plant-based meat would make up 15% of all meat sales by 2030. But the reality of Americans' interest in plant-based meat has proven more complicated than investors thought, and the adoption of meat alternatives has been slower than what was once hoped. Today Beyond Meat is valued at just over $900 million. The sobering story is similar to those experienced by many new ventures that see exhilarating hype after a flood of Silicon Valley venture capital cash, fueled by excitement about innovation. Bill Gates backed Beyond Meat, and a number of venture capital firms that typically invest in tech startups funneled money to startups making plant-based meat. Even the meat industry's biggest players have, ironically, invested in companies coming up with plant-based meat. While eating plant-based meat (or no meat at all) has been shown to be the most effective thing individual consumers can do to fight climate change, "consumers seem hesitant to adapt their behavior when the environment -- not their health or wallets -- is the sole beneficiary," reports The Guardian. "Despite the increasing alarm over climate change, the number of Americans who are vegetarian or vegan has remained relatively stable over the last 20 years."

"Even when participants in a study conducted at Purdue University in Indiana were given information about the carbon footprint of meat production, participants were more likely to go with regular meat over a plant-based alternative."

New submitter cj9er writes: Considering all the privacy issues in today's online climate (all the issues with Meta right now), what is the best high-end smartphone to select?

Apple: No way they don't sell your data... Sure, they have privacy for third-party apps, but what about the data they collect from the phone itself? Consider what the revenue is on a single smartphone (say $150), how do you think they have all that cash on hand?

Google: Yeah right, Pixel is probably collecting [data] 24/7 considering their main business is selling ads on Search. They have developed the Pixel line because they probably realized they were missing out on the direct collection of data from their own hardware (cut out the middle players using Android).

Samsung: Their TVs even collect and sell data on you. I don't really understand the price premium on Galaxy phones anyways.

I have kept my data and Wi-Fi turned off on my phones for years. Initially it was for battery reasons but now add in data collection. Ultimately, if we could turn off the GPS feature at will on our phones, maybe we could prevent all tracking (except for cellular triangulation). If we then think about safety, GPS is great and now with satellite-tracking on Apple phones, even better. But then what is going on behind the scenes 99.99% of the rest of the time when you don't require those options for safety reasons?

What phone manufacturer can be trusted?

As Google tries to navigate an unfamiliar environment of slowing growth, cost-cutting and employee dissent over cultural changes, CEO Sundar Pichai is finding himself on the defensive. From a report: At a companywide all-hands meeting this week, Pichai was faced with tough questions from employees related to cuts to travel and entertainment budgets, managing productivity, and potential layoffs, according to audio obtained by CNBC. Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google's internal Dory system, why the company is "nickel-and-diming employees" by slashing travel and swag budgets at a time when "Google has record profits and huge cash reserves," as it did coming out of the Covid pandemic. "How do I say it?" Pichai began his measured response. "Look, I hope all of you are reading the news, externally. The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it's important that as a company, we pull together to get through moments like this."

Coinbase Global has been searching for new ways to make money. One business it flirted with was controversial: using its own money to speculate on cryptocurrencies. WSJ: Last year, Coinbase -- which operates a large cryptocurrency exchange that handles bitcoin and other digital coins -- hired at least four senior Wall Street traders and launched a group to generate profit, in part, by using the company's cash to trade and "stake," or lock up, cryptocurrencies, according to people close to the matter. The activity was described as "proprietary" trading by the people at the company. Earlier this year, the team completed a $100 million transaction that the group viewed as a test trade of the new effort, according to the people. The transaction came after Coinbase executives testified to members of Congress last year that the company didn't buy and sell digital currencies for its own account. The monthslong effort to launch the Coinbase Risk Solutions group underscores how Coinbase, which has seen its shares tumble about 70% over the past year, has entertained more aggressive strategies as it tries to develop new businesses. Coinbase says some at the company examined pursuing proprietary trading but decided against it.

Banks' cryptocurrency projects have been upended by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accounting guidance that would make it too capital-intensive for lenders to hold crypto tokens on behalf of clients, Reuters reported Friday, citing more than half a dozen people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: A slew of lenders including U.S. Bancorp, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase, BNY Mellon, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas and State Street offer or are working on crypto products and services for clients in a bid to tap in to the $1 trillion crypto market, according to their public statements and media reports.

But on March 31, the SEC said public companies that hold crypto assets on behalf of clients or others must account for them as liabilities on their balance sheets due to their technological, legal and regulatory risks. While the guidance applies to all public companies, it is especially problematic for banks because their strict capital rules, overseen by bank regulators, require them to hold cash against balance sheet liabilities. The SEC did not consult the banking regulators when issuing the guidance, according to four of the people. The SEC's move complicates banks' efforts to jump on the digital asset bandwagon, and could keep them on the sidelines even as they report increased demand from clients looking to access the burgeoning market. "This has thrown a huge wrench in the mix," one of the sources said. Lenders building out crypto offerings have had "to cease moving forward with those plans pending any kind of further action from the SEC and the banking regulatory agencies," they added. Custody banks State Street and BNY Mellon, which have been building digital asset offerings, are among those whose projects have been disrupted, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

A jeweler. A plastic surgeon. An OnlyFans Model. They and others received a blue check in likely the biggest Instagram verification scheme revealed to date. After ProPublica started asking questions, Meta removed badges from over 300 accounts. From a report: To his more than 150,000 followers on Instagram, Dr. Martin Jugenburg is Real Dr. 6ix, a well-coiffed Toronto plastic surgeon posting images and video of his work sculpting the decolletage, tucking the tummies and lifting the faces of his primarily female clientele.

Jugenburg's physician-influencer tendencies led to a six-month suspension of his Ontario medical license in 2021 after he admitted to filming patient interactions and sharing images of procedures without consent. He apologized for the lapse and is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from female patients who say their privacy was violated. But on Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, and in roughly a dozen sponsored posts scattered across the web, Jugenburg's career and controversial history was eclipsed by a new identity. On those platforms, he was DJ Dr. 6ix, a house music producer who's celebrated for his "inherent instinctual ability for music composition" and who "assures his followers that his music is absolutely unique." It's an unconvincing persona -- perhaps even less so once his "music" is played. But it was enough to secure what he wanted: a verification badge for his Instagram account.

The coveted blue tick can be difficult to obtain and is supposed to assure that anyone who bears one is who they claim to be. A ProPublica investigation determined that Jugenburg's dubious alter ego was created as part of what appears to be the largest Instagram account verification scheme ever uncovered. With a generous greasing of cash, the operation transformed hundreds of clients into musical artists in an attempt to trick Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, into verifying their accounts and hopefully paving the way to lucrative endorsements and a coveted social status. Since at least 2021, at least hundreds of people -- including jewelers, crypto entrepreneurs, OnlyFans models and reality show TV stars -- were clients of a scheme to get improperly verified as musicians on Instagram, according to the investigation's findings and information from Meta.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Hackers are breaking into unsuspecting victims' Cash App accounts, a massively popular payment app, and stealing hundreds of dollars, according to victims Motherboard spoke to. In one person's case, they said, Cash App has not reimbursed them for the stolen funds. "It's scary!" Liz Shelby, who said their son was a victim of the hacking, told Motherboard in an online chat. "My son saved up some cash for a small vacation with his grandma. We put it in his Cash App before he left. He called me on Aug. 9, and told me that his money was gone." Shelby said that after she looked at the account she found that someone else had logged into it and sent themselves the money. Shelby said she's been emailing Cash App support, without success. Marvis Herring, another target, told Motherboard that hackers attempted to steal $1,400, in the form of two installments of $700. In those cases, Herring believes his bank blocked the fraudulent transactions.

Motherboard saw many other people reporting on social media that their Cash App accounts had been compromised in some way. "The main thing I thought was weird is that I went to change my account password and there really isn't a password for Cash App accounts," Herring added. When users sign up to Cash App, they can use either an email address or a phone number to open an account. After doing so, they receive a login code sent to either of those. On fraud websites, dark web marketplaces, and social media, multiple people appear to be selling login details associated with Cash App accounts. Some of these peoples' listings specify that the logs contain the email address and password for a linked email account. Some of the listings may be scams, but those on the dark web marketplaces come from fraudsters who have received positive feedback from alleged customers, according to the review system that is common on such sites. One listing for hacked Cash App accounts said the vendor has sold that specific item multiple times.

Fraudsters also appear to be offering Cash App accounts for another purpose: laundering money. Motherboard found multiple listings on a dark web marketplace offering these newly created and verified accounts. Cash App requires users to verify their identity to use some features, and this can require them providing their Social Security Number with the platform. These already verified accounts will allow fraudsters to buy Bitcoin through the Cash App without having to verify their identity, the listing suggests. [...] On its website, Cash App encourages users to make sure their linked email address has two-factor authentication enabled. The app also has an extra feature called Security Lock which means that each transfer requires the user to enter a PIN. "Preventing fraud is critically important to Cash App. We continue to invest in and bolster fraud-fighting resources by both increasing staffing and adopting new technology. We are constantly improving systems and controls to help prevent, detect, and report bad activity on the platform," a Cash App spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement. "For those who believe they have fallen victim to an identity-theft or account take-over scams, we encourage them to reach out to Cash App Support where we will review the account in question. If deemed fraudulent, we will take the necessary action starting with account closure and disablement of all applicable products."

The IPO market is on pace for its worst year in decades, leaving fledgling companies with few options but to burn through cash while they wait for the stock market to calm. From a report: Late last year, hundreds of companies were in the final stages of preparing to go public, encouraged by the best 18 months ever for U.S. initial public offerings. Then a combination of factors -- sky-high inflation, rising interest rates and Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- sent shock waves through the stock market. The IPO pipeline froze. So far this year, traditional IPOs have raised only $5.1 billion all told, Dealogic data show. Typically at this point in the year, traditional IPOs have raised around $33 billion, according to Dealogic data that goes back to 1995. Last year at this point, these offerings raised more than $100 billion. The last time levels were this low was 2009, when the U.S. was recovering from the depths of the financial crisis and the IPO market reopened near the end of the year. IPO advisers say they don't expect 2022 to follow that pattern, meaning it could end up being the worst year for raising money in IPOs since Dealogic, a research firm, started tracking it in 1995.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: America is home to the heftiest interchange fees of any major economy -- costs are an order of magnitude greater than in Europe and China. That largely benefits two firms: Visa and Mastercard, which facilitate more than three-quarters of the country's credit-card transactions. Doing so has made them two of the most profitable companies in the world, with net margins last year of 51% and 46% respectively. Rank every firm (excluding real-estate-investment trusts) in the s&p 500 index by their average net-profit margins last year, five years ago and a decade ago, and only four appear in the top 20 every time. Two are financial-information firms, Intercontinental Exchange and the cme Group. The others are Mastercard and Visa. At first glance their position appears insurmountable. Already dominant, in recent years the firms have been boosted by a covid-induced rise in online shopping. American consumers used credit or debit cards for 45% of their transactions in 2016; by 2021, that had reached 57%. The migration from cash is "a significant and long-running tailwind," says Craig Vosburg of Mastercard. Yet two threats loom. The first comes from Washington, where legislators hope to smash the duo's grip on payments. The second is virtual. Payments have been transformed in Brazil, China and Indonesia by cheap, convenient app-based options from tech giants like Mercado Pago, Ant Group, Tencent and Grab. After a long wait, new entrants now look like they could shake up America's market.

[...] On July 28th Richard Durbin, the same Democratic senator who regulated debit interchange a decade ago, introduced the Credit Card Competition Act (ccc). It does not propose a cap on interchange, as the debit rule does, since costs for credit cards are more variable than for debit cards, making it harder to find the right level. Instead, the ccc would attempt to spur competition by breaking the links between card networks and banks. At present, when a bank issues a credit card every transaction on it is processed by the card network the bank stipulates, meaning the bank is guaranteed the interchange fee the network sets. If the ccc becomes law it will force banks to offer merchants the choice of at least two different card networks. Crucially, these choices could not be the two biggest -- at least one smaller network would have to be offered. They could compete for business by offering lower interchange rates, and merchants would presumably jump at the offer.

Two factors help the bill's chances. It is sponsored by Mr Durbin, the second-most senior Democrat in the Senate, and it is bipartisan, co-sponsored by Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas. The ccc's best chance is probably as an amendment to another bigger piece of legislation, which is how debit-card regulation passed in 2010. Even if the effort fails, or fails to work as intended, a potentially bigger threat to the giants looms. So far new entrants to the payments market have benefited Visa and Mastercard, by making it easier for consumers to use their cards online. But as the new fintechs have gained clout, their decisions about the sorts of payments they offer could influence how much money travels along the card networks. Stripe, a large payments-infrastructure firm, says it is working to provide merchants with payment methods that will lower their costs. Current options include a box for customers to enter card details, but also Klarna, a "buy-now-pay-later" provider through which customers can pay for purchases using bank transfers, thus avoiding the card networks. It could soon include things like FedNow, a real-time bank-transfer system being built by the Fed, which is due to be launched next year. In time, it could even include central-bank digital currencies or cryptocurrencies.

Competitors might make little headway if the perks for sticking with credit cards are sufficiently juicy. But merchants can offer their own incentives. When your correspondent recently went to purchase a pair of linen trousers from Everlane, an online retailer, she was encouraged to pay using Catch, a fintech app. The app linked to her bank account via another payment startup called Plaid. As a thank you for avoiding the card networks, Everlane offered a shop credit worth 5% of the transaction value. Catch has signed up a handful of fashionable, millennial brands including Pacsun, another clothing retailer, and Farmacy, a skincare firm. For evidence that this poses a threat, look no further than Visa's attempted purchase of Plaid. In 2020 the firm tried to buy the upstart for $5.3bn, only for the deal to be scuppered by antitrust regulators on the grounds that the transaction would have allowed Visa to eliminate a competitive threat. Ultimately, Visa gave up, but the attempt was nonetheless telling. The house of cards carefully constructed by the two payment giants is formidable and long-standing. But it is not indestructible.

Google uses Linux "in almost everything," according to the leader of Google's "product security response" team — including Chromebooks, Android smartphones, and even Google Cloud.

"Because of this, we have heavily invested in Linux's security — and today, we're announcing how we're building on those investments and increasing our rewards." In 2020, we launched an open-source Kubernetes-based Capture-the-Flag (CTF) project called, kCTF. The kCTF Vulnerability Rewards Program lets researchers connect to our Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) instances, and if they can hack it, they get a flag, and are potentially rewarded.

All of GKE and its dependencies are in scope, but every flag caught so far has been a container breakout through a Linux kernel vulnerability.

We've learned that finding and exploiting heap memory corruption vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel could be made a lot harder. Unfortunately, security mitigations are often hard to quantify, however, we think we've found a way to do so concretely going forward....

First, we are indefinitely extending the increased reward amounts we announced earlier this year, meaning we'll continue to pay $20,000 — $91,337 USD for vulnerabilities on our lab kCTF deployment to reward the important work being done to understand and improve kernel security. This is in addition to our existing patch rewards for proactive security improvements.

Second, we're launching new instances with additional rewards to evaluate the latest Linux kernel stable image as well as new experimental mitigations in a custom kernel we've built. Rather than simply learning about the current state of the stable kernels, the new instances will be used to ask the community to help us evaluate the value of both our latest and more experimental security mitigations. Today, we are starting with a set of mitigations we believe will make most of the vulnerabilities (9/10 vulns and 10/13 exploits) we received this past year more difficult to exploit. For new exploits of vulnerabilities submitted which also compromise the latest Linux kernel, we will pay an additional $21,000 USD. For those which compromise our custom Linux kernel with our experimental mitigations, the reward will be another $21,000 USD (if they are clearly bypassing the mitigations we are testing). This brings the total rewards up to a maximum of $133,337 USD.

We hope this will allow us to learn more about how hard (or easy) it is to bypass our experimental mitigations.....

With the kCTF VRP program, we are building a pipeline to analyze, experiment, measure and build security mitigations to make the Linux kernel as safe as we can with the help of the security community. We hope that, over time, we will be able to make security mitigations that make exploitation of Linux kernel vulnerabilities as hard as possible.
"We don't care about vulnerabilities; we care about exploits," Vela told the Register. "We expect the vulnerabilities are there, they will get patched, and that's nice and all. But the whole idea is what do to beyond just patching a couple of vulnerabilities." In total, Google paid out $8.7 million in rewards to almost 700 researchers across its various VPRs last year. "We are just one actor in the whole community that happens to have economic resources, financial resources, but we need the community to help us make the Kernel better," Vela said.

"If the community is engaged and helps us validate the mitigations that we have, then, we will continue growing on top of that. But the whole idea is that we need to see where the community wants us to go with this...."

[I]t's not always about the cash payout, according to Vela, and different bug hunters have different motivations. Some want money, some want fame and some just want to solve an interesting problem, Vela said. "We are trying to find the right combination to captivate people."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Lawsuits from disgruntled investors are beginning to stack up after crypto prices plummeted over the past few months, leaving them with steep losses. Billionaire Mark Cuban is the latest celebrity on the receiving end of investor ire. A group of Voyager Digital customers filed a class-action suit in Florida federal court against Cuban, as well as the basketball team he owns, the Dallas Mavericks, alleging their promotion of the crypto platform resulted in more than 3.5 million investors losing $5 billion collectively. Voyager Digital's CEO, Stephen Ehrlich, was also named as a defendant in the suit. Voyager, a New Jersey-based crypto firm, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July following a crash in crypto prices that instigated a liquidity crunch on the platform. The firm is one of many that got burned after loaning money, in Voyager's case worth ~$600 million, to hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC). 3AC declared bankruptcy in the wake of the Terra collapse, triggering a domino effect throughout the crypto markets when the hedge fund defaulted on more than $3.5 billion worth of obligations to its lenders.

The plaintiffs in the suit against Cuban described Voyager as "an unregulated and unsustainable fraud, similar to other Ponzi schemes." They claim in the complaint that Cuban and Ehrlich personally reached out to investors both individually and through a partnership with the Dallas Mavericks, to encourage them to invest with the platform. The lawsuit also specifically calls out Voyager's Earn Program Accounts (EPAs), claiming they are unregistered securities. The Mavericks launched their exclusive, five-year partnership with Voyager in October 2021, giving fans cash rewards for making trades on the platform. The announcement said the cryptocurrencies were "an attractive investment for novice investors who might only have $100 to start." According to the lawsuit filed today, Cuban also promoted the company "as a Voyager customer himself, in a ploy to dupe investors into believing that Voyager was a safe platform." Although the partnership with the Mavericks was disclosed, the lawsuit alleges that Cuban did not disclose the compensation he personally received to promote Voyager. "During the runup in crypto prices, many web3 companies, apparently including Voyager, pretended that existing laws and regulations did not apply to crypto," said Shane Seppinni, founder of law firm Seppinni LLP, who was worked on various crypto and "meme stock" lawsuits. "Even smart people like Mark Cuban got caught up in the hype. But now that crypto prices have crashed it's plain to see that centuries-old legal theories like fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and civil conspiracy are as applicable to crypto as they are elsewhere."