This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I Hood podcast, and I'm an area senior editor for Bloomberg News. In for Stacy Murray Ishmael. It's Friday, February seventeen. After years of inaction, regulators decided that the shortest month was the best suited to come after. Crypto State regulators in New York this week took aim at stable coin issuer Paxos and its relationship with Crypto Exchange Finance. The SEC has also moved ahead with a plan that would make it harder for investment firms to work with cryptocurrency companies, and of course we have an update on SPF. SO to help me break down the latest developments in the world of digital assets, I'm joined by Bloomberg reporters Alison Versus Brill. I think a lot of people are a sort of just reading the tea leaves right now, understanding that the environment might not be very friendly and Emily Nicole. It's very difficult for any single jurisdiction to oversee a crypto company effectively. It's sunny in London, which is not but it was awful again this morning and yesterday I was like walk into the office, it was beautiful and I was like, this is this is great, like beautiful sunny class guys. And then this morning I was like, oh, it's back to normal. Cool. So now that we've given you the weather updates, we're going to actually move move to crypto UM. I was trying to talk about things that were a little bit more cheerful, but then I guess it was raining. So it's been pretty intense in your beat for crypto UM, and I guess if you're a crypto firm, it's been even worse. But if you want to just give us in a sentence, sort of the mood there and in finn reg circles on crypto. Yeah, I mean, so the mood right now is that there's definitely this feel of sort of a crypto crackdown, if you will. Uh. And I think everyone expected that there was going to be a response post f t X. You know, there was a lot of talk among regulators and on the hill of the need to you know, address some of the issues we saw in the industry last year. But I think there's been some surprise a kind of the the speed and sort of the level of activity we've seen in just the first few months of three. Um, you know, we've had banking regulators. The FED recently denied Custodia Banks application to be a member, and then the Kansas City FED denied their application to have a master account. We've seen the SEC bringing a number of actions. Most recently is the thirty million dollar settlement with crack In. The SEC has sued crypto exchange crack and Forwards Taking Service, accusing it of offering illegal, unregistered securities with advertised investment returns as high as twenty one now. The SEC has alleged that Krackin didn't give investors the right disclosures. Kraken didn't admit or deny wrongdoing, though it agreed to settle for thirty million dollars and also stuff. So it seems like there's a lot of activity picking up. Some have believed this to be a coordinated effort, given that there was a White House statement too earlier this year talking about the need to ramp up enforcement issue new guidance. But definitely seems like there's more to come. Let's move on to I guess the big news at the start of the week, which was about you know, Paksos and the coined issues, the stable coined issues that is Finance branded BUSD, Emily, do you want to maybe go over what happened there, what the highlights were. So Pakos is a New York regulated company's registered with the New York Financial Services so it is pretty much above board in all aspects on that front, and it operates a stable coin called Finance USD b USD in conjunction with Finance. Pretty much everything sits underneath Paxos. His ownership, Pacos is management. And what we saw was first the SEC issued a well's notice to Paksas saying that basically, we're going to be looking into you and there may be some concerns that BUSD is an unregistered security. And then following that, the New York DFS said to Pacsus that we have had issues with the way that you manage your relationship with Binance. We've raised these with you, you haven't corrected them in the time that we set. So therefore we're going to tell you to wind down b USD entirely. And that's about sixteen billion dollars worth of tokens that now have to be wound down put back onto the market in some way, whether that's through customers redeeming their tokens and getting dollars back or transferring them into other kinds of stable coins and crypto assets. So I guess this was significant because it's sort of highlights how the US has decided to proceed. You know, other governments have been issuing regulations or coming close fushing regulations, having you know, more clear guidelines and rules around crypto, but the US is regulating by enforcement. That that's what you call it, right, Ali, Um, do you want to tell us how that sort of differs in why some people might not like it or the crypto firms are crumbling now? Right? So, you know, definitely, the industry complains that there's this regulation by enforcement approach where you know, they claim that there haven't been clear rules up the road set, that the SEC hasn't put out any guidance or really any agencies in the government right now, they've been leaning on Congress to do more, and so in the meantime, we've seen a lot of these enforcement actions, um, and you'll see consumer advocate groups so our markets groups that are praising the SEC for what it's doing. So there's somewhat of a split kind of feel right now. I think what's especially interesting though on the stable coin front is that, you know, there was this effort by the by Congress in the US last year to draft legislation that would regulate stable coins. The Treasury Department was very involved in that, and that would specifically be you know, reserved back stable coins what they were calling payment stable coins, and that would essentially put them under banking regulation. UM. So I'm very curious to see if the SEC moves forward with this enforcement action against Paxos and says that the stable coin is a security And I'm also interested to see if there's any sort of backlash from you know, maybe Treasury or from the Hill to say, you know, we put all this work trying to set guardrails and you're kind of preempting that by claiming these are our security So. Um. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how all of this shapes up. Emily, you have been reporting a bit more on you know, not necessarily bust, but other binance related um token, so the tokens that finance issues that are connected to even BUSD and so what have you sort of been finding out on that before? And then maybe we could talk a little bit more about sort of what an i DFS said about sort of the action with Pasos. Yeah, so, in the statement that the ny DFS issued about its decision with Pasos, it pointed specifically to something that Finance issues called a Binance peg token. It's a version of BUSD that is actually under the auspices of Binance rather than under Packsos. The way it works is that Finance has a big reserve full of BUSD tokens issued by packsas and then uses those as collateral to support Finance issued versions of that token on other block chains. UM. And we've previously reported throughout this year about how historically some of the reserves for tokens like the Binance token b usd UM have been underclasterized. They didn't have enough of that those tokens in the reserve to back them, and so there was essentially some level of free money just being printed out and around and they fixed it all later on. UM. Obviously that is concerning for a regulator, right They New York DFS has control over what packs us can do. But if Finance then takes to step further and and basically puts the token on top of that and runs wild with it. New York DFS has no control over that, and then you know, probably there's a little bit of a ripple effect going on. UM and they noted that in the statement against PAXA was saying that that's likely going to be one of the things that would have triggered this, the concerns they had with Paxos and its relationship with Binance and any kind of material issues they were facing. So you also had a scoop this week that was also tangentially related to to regulators UM. You reported that that Circle had warned UM and with your FS which is also UM their own regulator tool, they share a regulator about issues UM. Do you want to talk a bit more about that. Yes, So what we heard is that UM last year essentially so well before I reported anything to do with these finance tokens being under backed, and before this action came out against Paxles from the SEC and and y DFS this week, Circle had discovered all of this stuff the same way we had. You know, it's all publicly available blockchain day, so you can see it if you know where to look. They'd noticed that this had been going on with finances tokens, some of these tokens that they had weren't being backed properly, and so they as a compliance because I notified the New York Department Financial Services that this had been going on in case there was anything that needs to be looked into, and then now we have this action. There's nothing to say that, for example, what Circle did did tip off you know, what was happening later on, But it definitely means that the New York Department Financial Services was at least aware of this situation long before we reported it in in January, we also had some news on hedge funds facing scrutiny. Why is that? Do you want to tell us about this other development this week? There's actually a proposal that the SEC put out Wednesday that would essentially, you know, place new restrictions on companies that want to act as custodians for hedge funds, pension funds, prime equity firms. So basically, if you you know, want to be what it's called a qualified custodian, you have to do a couple of things. You have to enter into a written agreement to say that the client's assets from that hedge fund or private equity fund are being segregated properly and that they're protected in cases of bankruptcy and insolvency, which has obviously been an issue with some of the crypto bankruptcies we saw last year. UM, you would also have to you know, potentially be subject uh to certain new requirements UM and and turning over information to these hedge funds that you're working with. UM. And a lot of people are viewing this. You know, this is a much broader proposal. It doesn't just affect crypto but a lot of people are viewing this as as sort of targeted at crypto firms based on the way that they operate today. UH. And even the SEC chairman Gary Gensler, in a statement said, you know, make no mistake, based on the way crypto firms operate, like none would be able to qualify or be qualified custodians UM under these new requirements. The one thing I will say, you know, the SEC is is voting on that proposal and then you know that would be put out for public common and then it would have to be you know, finalized, likely months later. So it's not currently in effect, but it's another sign of you know, just the headaches that are are sort of coming for the crypto industry. Right now. We'll be right back with more of the week's top crypto stories with Bloomberg reporters Emily Nicole and Alison versus brul So. This brings up another way that I guess regulators in the US are approaching tackling sort of the risks posed by crypto because one of the good things good in you know, quotation marks, I guess, um good things about this this big crash was that you know, the the major financial firms and the mainstream financial system was really not affected, and part was because they haven't been really dealing. And I think there's a bit of concern that you know, if crypto grows again, we might seem more trickling down to you know, firms that are properly regulated by the O c C, the FED so and firms that have more deposits from normal people and normal citizens. So, I guess another way, And we had a great story out this week from some of our colleagues about how banks and other financial firms that have you know, or fully regulated by by the FED and the OCC are actually getting sort of, um directly or indirectly sort of told to limit their their interactions with with crypto firms. How is this an, I guess an interesting development and what are the key things you think? Ali? Yeah, so, you know, the banking regulators in the US, that includes the Office of the Control of the Currency, the FED, UM, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, they put out a joint statement warning banks of the risks of engaging with digital assets. UM. I will know in that they kind of didn't say, you know, you can't you can't be involved in this at all. You just have to make sure you're doing it in a safe and sound manner. But a lot of people have taken that as a warning of, you know, just just don't get involved in this. UM. I think a lot of people are sort of just reading the tea leaves right now, understanding that the environment might not be very friendly if you're a bank that's having these partnerships are getting involved in digital assets. Yeah. And I guess you know, we're seeing sort of de risking from from crypto as banks have been de risking from other risky sectors. I guess just taking a step back, Emily, like, what does it mean from the rest of the world's perspective, right, Like, you know, if you're looking at it from here, it seems really like the US is cracking down, coming at it full force. But as we were saying before, the other jurisdictions have taken a completely different approach, or maybe for now we don't know there might be action coming, but they have stepped in with regulations. So does it make it a little bit more welcoming here? What are you hearing? One of the things that was a running narrative in two, particularly when stuff started to go upside down with crypto UM, was that it's very difficult for any single jurisdiction to oversee a crypto company effectively. Even with the biggest companies, they don't have their headquarters in any specific pace. But if even if you think about about something like coin based, it's based in the US, UM, there's still everywhere, right, Crypto is global, and so that means that regulators all around the world need to have relatively similar rules if they're going to have any luck in regulating crypto effectively. And the concern is that the US approach is basically upending that. It means that the US is spending more time on enforcement less time on thinking about what a regulatory framework might look like, and it makes it more difficult for other jurisdictions to match that. In turn, that then means that crypto companies are thinking, Okay, well, if I'm in the US, I'm going to get told off for doing X y Z. But if I'm based in the UK or Europe, or Singapore or Hong Kong or Dubai, any of these places, there are more clear rules. I understand what I'm doing, I'm probably not going to get told off. I'm at least going to be able to operate within the boundaries of something UM and therefore it's probably a better place for me to do business. So we've been hearing that, you know, more companies are enquiring about that, they're thinking about where the most crypto friendly jurisdictions are, not necessarily jurisdictions that will let them get away with with murder, but jurisdictions that at least just have defined rules and setting boundaries and and and that's something that's definitely going to be becoming more clear this year as rules are settled in places like Europe and the UK. I think we can maybe UM go back to a person and we've been talking about regulations before. One of the biggest people in crypto in the news UM over the past few months and even before that, has been Sam bank Man Freed, the founder of FDx. There was news this week that he won't be allowed to use VPNs. What's going on there? So yeah, Sam had requested that he still be allowed to use VPNs and encrypted apps so that you could message you know, a couple fd ex employees here and there, but mostly do innocuous things like watch the Super Bowl using his Bahamas based registration UM and and the judge denied that, basically not buying the argument that that will be all he does. Because these networks, they allow users to obscure their activity essentially would make it much harder for the courts to see exactly what Sam is doing with his time, who he's talking to, what he's saying, and all of that is very important at the minute when, for example, the ft X, the state is still trying to find assets all over the world that FTX might have, and also Sam is still very heen to play his part and help out and help help everybody get their money back when simultaneously there are criminal charges against him. So um, that's what's been going on with Sam big we're freedom this week. So I guess I have to say, and I didn't say it before, but you shouldn't be listening to and following. Ali and Emily are both breaking lots of great stories on both regulation and stable coins. It's not just like a plug, it's it's actually the case. All right, Thank you, all right, thanks so much. That was Bloomberg reporters Emily Nicole and Alison versus Brille. You can find more of their reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal, on Bloomberg dot com and on Twitter. For more, be sure to check out our twice weekly newsletter, Bloomberg Crypto. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your comments, questions, or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Vergelina. Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Farouk and Sharon Barrero. Our associate producers are Ty Butler and Moses on Them Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron. I'm Stacy, Marie Ishmael, have a great weekend of NATO. About that appe

This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I Hood podcast, and I'm an area senior editor for Bloomberg News. In for Stacy Murray Ishmael. It's Friday, February seventeen. After years of inaction, regulators decided that the shortest month was the best suited to come after. Crypto State regulators in New York this week took aim at stable coin issuer Paxos and its relationship with Crypto Exchange Finance. The SEC has also moved ahead with a plan that would make it harder for investment firms to work with cryptocurrency companies, and of course we have an update on SPF. SO to help me break down the latest developments in the world of digital assets, I'm joined by Bloomberg reporters Alison Versus Brill. I think a lot of people are a sort of just reading the tea leaves right now, understanding that the environment might not be very friendly and Emily Nicole. It's very difficult for any single jurisdiction to oversee a crypto company effectively. It's sunny in London, which is not but it was awful again this morning and yesterday I was like walk into the office, it was beautiful and I was like, this is this is great, like beautiful sunny class guys. And then this morning I was like, oh, it's back to normal. Cool. So now that we've given you the weather updates, we're going to actually move move to crypto UM. I was trying to talk about things that were a little bit more cheerful, but then I guess it was raining. So it's been pretty intense in your beat for crypto UM, and I guess if you're a crypto firm, it's been even worse. But if you want to just give us in a sentence, sort of the mood there and in finn reg circles on crypto. Yeah, I mean, so the mood right now is that there's definitely this feel of sort of a crypto crackdown, if you will. Uh. And I think everyone expected that there was going to be a response post f t X. You know, there was a lot of talk among regulators and on the hill of the need to you know, address some of the issues we saw in the industry last year. But I think there's been some surprise a kind of the the speed and sort of the level of activity we've seen in just the first few months of three. Um, you know, we've had banking regulators. The FED recently denied Custodia Banks application to be a member, and then the Kansas City FED denied their application to have a master account. We've seen the SEC bringing a number of actions. Most recently is the thirty million dollar settlement with crack In. The SEC has sued crypto exchange crack and Forwards Taking Service, accusing it of offering illegal, unregistered securities with advertised investment returns as high as twenty one now. The SEC has alleged that Krackin didn't give investors the right disclosures. Kraken didn't admit or deny wrongdoing, though it agreed to settle for thirty million dollars and also stuff. So it seems like there's a lot of activity picking up. Some have believed this to be a coordinated effort, given that there was a White House statement too earlier this year talking about the need to ramp up enforcement issue new guidance. But definitely seems like there's more to come. Let's move on to I guess the big news at the start of the week, which was about you know, Paksos and the coined issues, the stable coined issues that is Finance branded BUSD, Emily, do you want to maybe go over what happened there, what the highlights were. So Pakos is a New York regulated company's registered with the New York Financial Services so it is pretty much above board in all aspects on that front, and it operates a stable coin called Finance USD b USD in conjunction with Finance. Pretty much everything sits underneath Paxos. His ownership, Pacos is management. And what we saw was first the SEC issued a well's notice to Paksas saying that basically, we're going to be looking into you and there may be some concerns that BUSD is an unregistered security. And then following that, the New York DFS said to Pacsus that we have had issues with the way that you manage your relationship with Binance. We've raised these with you, you haven't corrected them in the time that we set. So therefore we're going to tell you to wind down b USD entirely. And that's about sixteen billion dollars worth of tokens that now have to be wound down put back onto the market in some way, whether that's through customers redeeming their tokens and getting dollars back or transferring them into other kinds of stable coins and crypto assets. So I guess this was significant because it's sort of highlights how the US has decided to proceed. You know, other governments have been issuing regulations or coming close fushing regulations, having you know, more clear guidelines and rules around crypto, but the US is regulating by enforcement. That that's what you call it, right, Ali, Um, do you want to tell us how that sort of differs in why some people might not like it or the crypto firms are crumbling now? Right? So, you know, definitely, the industry complains that there's this regulation by enforcement approach where you know, they claim that there haven't been clear rules up the road set, that the SEC hasn't put out any guidance or really any agencies in the government right now, they've been leaning on Congress to do more, and so in the meantime, we've seen a lot of these enforcement actions, um, and you'll see consumer advocate groups so our markets groups that are praising the SEC for what it's doing. So there's somewhat of a split kind of feel right now. I think what's especially interesting though on the stable coin front is that, you know, there was this effort by the by Congress in the US last year to draft legislation that would regulate stable coins. The Treasury Department was very involved in that, and that would specifically be you know, reserved back stable coins what they were calling payment stable coins, and that would essentially put them under banking regulation. UM. So I'm very curious to see if the SEC moves forward with this enforcement action against Paxos and says that the stable coin is a security And I'm also interested to see if there's any sort of backlash from you know, maybe Treasury or from the Hill to say, you know, we put all this work trying to set guardrails and you're kind of preempting that by claiming these are our security So. Um. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how all of this shapes up. Emily, you have been reporting a bit more on you know, not necessarily bust, but other binance related um token, so the tokens that finance issues that are connected to even BUSD and so what have you sort of been finding out on that before? And then maybe we could talk a little bit more about sort of what an i DFS said about sort of the action with Pasos. Yeah, so, in the statement that the ny DFS issued about its decision with Pasos, it pointed specifically to something that Finance issues called a Binance peg token. It's a version of BUSD that is actually under the auspices of Binance rather than under Packsos. The way it works is that Finance has a big reserve full of BUSD tokens issued by packsas and then uses those as collateral to support Finance issued versions of that token on other block chains. UM. And we've previously reported throughout this year about how historically some of the reserves for tokens like the Binance token b usd UM have been underclasterized. They didn't have enough of that those tokens in the reserve to back them, and so there was essentially some level of free money just being printed out and around and they fixed it all later on. UM. Obviously that is concerning for a regulator, right They New York DFS has control over what packs us can do. But if Finance then takes to step further and and basically puts the token on top of that and runs wild with it. New York DFS has no control over that, and then you know, probably there's a little bit of a ripple effect going on. UM and they noted that in the statement against PAXA was saying that that's likely going to be one of the things that would have triggered this, the concerns they had with Paxos and its relationship with Binance and any kind of material issues they were facing. So you also had a scoop this week that was also tangentially related to to regulators UM. You reported that that Circle had warned UM and with your FS which is also UM their own regulator tool, they share a regulator about issues UM. Do you want to talk a bit more about that. Yes, So what we heard is that UM last year essentially so well before I reported anything to do with these finance tokens being under backed, and before this action came out against Paxles from the SEC and and y DFS this week, Circle had discovered all of this stuff the same way we had. You know, it's all publicly available blockchain day, so you can see it if you know where to look. They'd noticed that this had been going on with finances tokens, some of these tokens that they had weren't being backed properly, and so they as a compliance because I notified the New York Department Financial Services that this had been going on in case there was anything that needs to be looked into, and then now we have this action. There's nothing to say that, for example, what Circle did did tip off you know, what was happening later on, But it definitely means that the New York Department Financial Services was at least aware of this situation long before we reported it in in January, we also had some news on hedge funds facing scrutiny. Why is that? Do you want to tell us about this other development this week? There's actually a proposal that the SEC put out Wednesday that would essentially, you know, place new restrictions on companies that want to act as custodians for hedge funds, pension funds, prime equity firms. So basically, if you you know, want to be what it's called a qualified custodian, you have to do a couple of things. You have to enter into a written agreement to say that the client's assets from that hedge fund or private equity fund are being segregated properly and that they're protected in cases of bankruptcy and insolvency, which has obviously been an issue with some of the crypto bankruptcies we saw last year. UM, you would also have to you know, potentially be subject uh to certain new requirements UM and and turning over information to these hedge funds that you're working with. UM. And a lot of people are viewing this. You know, this is a much broader proposal. It doesn't just affect crypto but a lot of people are viewing this as as sort of targeted at crypto firms based on the way that they operate today. UH. And even the SEC chairman Gary Gensler, in a statement said, you know, make no mistake, based on the way crypto firms operate, like none would be able to qualify or be qualified custodians UM under these new requirements. The one thing I will say, you know, the SEC is is voting on that proposal and then you know that would be put out for public common and then it would have to be you know, finalized, likely months later. So it's not currently in effect, but it's another sign of you know, just the headaches that are are sort of coming for the crypto industry. Right now. We'll be right back with more of the week's top crypto stories with Bloomberg reporters Emily Nicole and Alison versus brul So. This brings up another way that I guess regulators in the US are approaching tackling sort of the risks posed by crypto because one of the good things good in you know, quotation marks, I guess, um good things about this this big crash was that you know, the the major financial firms and the mainstream financial system was really not affected, and part was because they haven't been really dealing. And I think there's a bit of concern that you know, if crypto grows again, we might seem more trickling down to you know, firms that are properly regulated by the O c C, the FED so and firms that have more deposits from normal people and normal citizens. So, I guess another way, And we had a great story out this week from some of our colleagues about how banks and other financial firms that have you know, or fully regulated by by the FED and the OCC are actually getting sort of, um directly or indirectly sort of told to limit their their interactions with with crypto firms. How is this an, I guess an interesting development and what are the key things you think? Ali? Yeah, so, you know, the banking regulators in the US, that includes the Office of the Control of the Currency, the FED, UM, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, they put out a joint statement warning banks of the risks of engaging with digital assets. UM. I will know in that they kind of didn't say, you know, you can't you can't be involved in this at all. You just have to make sure you're doing it in a safe and sound manner. But a lot of people have taken that as a warning of, you know, just just don't get involved in this. UM. I think a lot of people are sort of just reading the tea leaves right now, understanding that the environment might not be very friendly if you're a bank that's having these partnerships are getting involved in digital assets. Yeah. And I guess you know, we're seeing sort of de risking from from crypto as banks have been de risking from other risky sectors. I guess just taking a step back, Emily, like, what does it mean from the rest of the world's perspective, right, Like, you know, if you're looking at it from here, it seems really like the US is cracking down, coming at it full force. But as we were saying before, the other jurisdictions have taken a completely different approach, or maybe for now we don't know there might be action coming, but they have stepped in with regulations. So does it make it a little bit more welcoming here? What are you hearing? One of the things that was a running narrative in two, particularly when stuff started to go upside down with crypto UM, was that it's very difficult for any single jurisdiction to oversee a crypto company effectively. Even with the biggest companies, they don't have their headquarters in any specific pace. But if even if you think about about something like coin based, it's based in the US, UM, there's still everywhere, right, Crypto is global, and so that means that regulators all around the world need to have relatively similar rules if they're going to have any luck in regulating crypto effectively. And the concern is that the US approach is basically upending that. It means that the US is spending more time on enforcement less time on thinking about what a regulatory framework might look like, and it makes it more difficult for other jurisdictions to match that. In turn, that then means that crypto companies are thinking, Okay, well, if I'm in the US, I'm going to get told off for doing X y Z. But if I'm based in the UK or Europe, or Singapore or Hong Kong or Dubai, any of these places, there are more clear rules. I understand what I'm doing, I'm probably not going to get told off. I'm at least going to be able to operate within the boundaries of something UM and therefore it's probably a better place for me to do business. So we've been hearing that, you know, more companies are enquiring about that, they're thinking about where the most crypto friendly jurisdictions are, not necessarily jurisdictions that will let them get away with with murder, but jurisdictions that at least just have defined rules and setting boundaries and and and that's something that's definitely going to be becoming more clear this year as rules are settled in places like Europe and the UK. I think we can maybe UM go back to a person and we've been talking about regulations before. One of the biggest people in crypto in the news UM over the past few months and even before that, has been Sam bank Man Freed, the founder of FDx. There was news this week that he won't be allowed to use VPNs. What's going on there? So yeah, Sam had requested that he still be allowed to use VPNs and encrypted apps so that you could message you know, a couple fd ex employees here and there, but mostly do innocuous things like watch the Super Bowl using his Bahamas based registration UM and and the judge denied that, basically not buying the argument that that will be all he does. Because these networks, they allow users to obscure their activity essentially would make it much harder for the courts to see exactly what Sam is doing with his time, who he's talking to, what he's saying, and all of that is very important at the minute when, for example, the ft X, the state is still trying to find assets all over the world that FTX might have, and also Sam is still very heen to play his part and help out and help help everybody get their money back when simultaneously there are criminal charges against him. So um, that's what's been going on with Sam big we're freedom this week. So I guess I have to say, and I didn't say it before, but you shouldn't be listening to and following. Ali and Emily are both breaking lots of great stories on both regulation and stable coins. It's not just like a plug, it's it's actually the case. All right, Thank you, all right, thanks so much. That was Bloomberg reporters Emily Nicole and Alison versus Brille. You can find more of their reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal, on Bloomberg dot com and on Twitter. For more, be sure to check out our twice weekly newsletter, Bloomberg Crypto. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your comments, questions, or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Vergelina. Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Farouk and Sharon Barrero. Our associate producers are Ty Butler and Moses on Them Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron. I'm Stacy, Marie Ishmael, have a great weekend of NATO. About that appe