🚓 New 🚓 Tether, the world's largest stablecoin firm, caught up in a U.S. seizure of cash owned by offshore Caribbean bank, which was using an (allegedly) shady operator to access the U.S. financial system Story w/@Yueqi_Yang 👇 theinformation.com/articles/…

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So we're now in a world where you can claim a scoop saying people "discussed asking" someone to invest money? shouldn't we at least have that they approached that person before reporting it?

Erebor wants to be the first US bank in markets reopening to the global financial system. Venezuela first, now Syria. Basically: take geopolitical + compliance risk that big banks won’t, and become the financial bridge before others show up. theinformation.com/articles/…

🇸🇾NEW🇸🇾 Palmer Luckey's Erebor Bank, fresh from becoming a vital new financial bridge between the U.S. and Venezuela, is eyeing a new foreign foray: expanding into Syria. theinformation.com/articles/…

...June

🆕 new 🆕 Just how crypto-friendly should a crypto-friendly bank be? For Erebor, the new bank launched by Palmer Luckey, the sweetener it was offering new customers in the crypto industry was maybe slightly too friendly...

Who is Sergey Brin's 'MAGA girlfriend?' A story about fame, money and the reality TV nature of Trumpworld politics. My latest for @VanityFair: vanityfair.com/story/sergey-…

Latest from me: Ahead of Tim Cook's last day as CEO next week, the company held a small party for him last night, where OneRepublic played and he acknowledged a partner named Mike theinformation.com/articles/…

😎ahem 😎 theinformation.com/articles/…

NEWS: Cami Clark is something like the first lady of Anthropic. But she has had no public profile. We traced her winding road trying to make it and build social connections in tech. It's one of the most fascinating untold stories of anyone close to the center of AI. theinformation.com/articles/…

For those reading the @OpenAI blog post on its suit with Apple, here's @aatilley's story from yesterday on a wild security lapse in Apple's offboarding process for employees. theinformation.com/articles/…

🚨🚨SCOOP: Trump-linked fintech tied to "no KYC" crypto card programs, including one marketed for Iran sanctions evasion. Issuing partners have included Sutton Bank, Marqeta: You’ve probably heard of World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform launched by then-candidate Trump shortly before the 2024 election. You may have even heard of ALT5 Sigma — recently rebranded as AI Financial Corporation — into which World Liberty led a purported $1.5 billion investment in 2025. But you probably have not heard of ALT5 subsidiary MSwipe, a Quebec-based middleware-style payment card issuing platform, which also operates under the name Stradacarte. MSwipe, according to its own documentation and staff, offers so-called “no KYC” cards, ostensibly to be used for media buying — purchasing ads on popular platforms like Google and Facebook/Instagram, as well as across the web and in mobile apps through demand side platforms. But such cards can also be exploited by bad actors for illicit uses, including paying for ads to promote scams or counterfeit goods, as well as use for money laundering and sanctions evasion. MSwipe/Stradacarte works with 14 banks and program managers, one of its staffers told me, which appear to have included: -Wex, most commonly known for its fleet card offerings, though the company, which has a banking subsidiary, also operates a virtual card issuing service marketed to fintechs; -Marqeta, a card issuing platform popular with fintechs that partners closely with Sutton Bank. Sutton Bank confirmed it has worked with MSwipe, but stated that it was “a past relationship” that “ended in Q1 of 2026”; -Corpay, previously known as Fintwist, which issues payroll cards and prepaid cards through its relationships with Regions Bank and Republic Bank & Trust; -ConnexPay, a B2B payments platform that supports virtual card issuing, including in GBP and EUR, through its relationships with The Central Trust Bank and MVB Bank; -and ViaCarte, a Panama- and Bahamas-based principal member of Visa and Mastercard that offers programmatic virtual card issuance. Directly asked if KYC is required for media buying use cases — paying for ads on Google, Facebook, etc. — a Stradacarte staffer told me, “Because it is a media buy program, we don’t need to collect KYC for individual cardholders, so you can essentially just keep reusing the same cardholder name and address for all the cards you’re creating, if you want to. You just have to populate the cells with any information you want, and the card will work, as long as when you’re doing the transaction it matches the information you inputted correctly.” Multiple sources told Fintech Business Weekly that various “no KYC” crypto card programs have leveraged MSwipe/Stradacarte to power their offerings, including Alphaspace and Bitsika. Much more on this in Sunday's Fintech Business Weekly.

From the website of Kentland Federal Savings and Loan Association, the smallest bank in the U.S., which just collapsed

Scoop: In early June, the Justice Department sent out a memo warning its attorneys working on crypto cases that they should expect less cooperation from Binance. This comes as Binance is actively negotiating a formal end to its DOJ monitorship, implemented after the landmark 2023 criminal case against the leading crypto exchange, which has effectively been paused over the past year. In a statement, a Binance spokesperson denied to me that that the company is changing how it's cooperating with U.S. law enforcement. Also from the article: - The Treasury monitorship is still active - In June, the Treasury-appointed monitor, Sharon Cohen Levin, hosted a town hall with Binance's compliance staff, co-CEO Richard Teng, and Binance's new head of regulatory adherence, Andrew Stemmer

So, inhale: a Bay Area startup founded by Chinese immigrants, whose scooters touched off a micromobility VC bubble and reeled in cash from the most famous "software-eats-the-world" VC firm, nearly died in the pandemic, got bailed out by the world's biggest ride-hailing company, then took money from a petrostate — all to run a green-tech business whose flagship market is London, now led by an openly gay, Taiwanese former Obama White House aide who's taking it public, finally cashing out one of America's largest mutual funds.

Exclusive: Kalshi has surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue and has held early, informal talks with investment banks about an IPO, according to sources theinformation.com/articles/…

🎱 NEW 🎱 Along with insider trading, state lawsuits, national bans and anti-gambling critics, Polymarket and Kalshi are grappling with another potentially costly problem: fraud rings and crooks taking advantage of their payments systems. theinformation.com/articles/…

This story has everything: a Beverly Hills mansion 🔑, a Hollywood movie 🎬, accusations of "organized crime"-like behavior, and my childhood favorite comic books: Archie Comics. Inside the massive, debt-fueled fight for the future of Archie for @9finHQ: 9fin.com/insights/debt-fuele…