The owner of X is just one of many who may prefer Donald Trump to greater regulation under the Democrats Way back in the 1960s “the personal is political” was a powerful slogan capturing the reality of power dynamics within marriages. Today, an equally meaningful slogan might be that “the technological is political”, to reflect the way that a small number of global corporations have acquired political clout within liberal democracies. If anyone doubted that, then the recent appearance of Elon Musk alongside Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania provided useful confirmation of how technology has moved centre-stage in American politics. Musk may be a manchild with a bad tweeting habit, but he also owns the company that is providing internet connectivity to Ukrainian troops on the battlefield; and his rocket has been chosen by Nasa to be the vehicle to land the next Americans on the moon. There was a time when the tech industry wasn’t much interested in politics. It didn’t need to be because politics at the time wasn’t interested in it. Accordingly, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple grew to their gargantuan proportions in a remarkably permissive political environment. When democratic governments were not being dazzled by the technology, they were asleep at the wheel; and antitrust regulators had been captured by the legalistic doctrine peddled by Robert Bork and his enablers in the University of Chicago Law School – the doctrine that there was little wrong with corporate dominance unless it was harming consumers. The test for harm was price-gouging, and since Google’s and Facebook’s services were “free”, where was the harm, exactly? And though Amazon’s products weren’t free, the company was ruthlessly undercutting competitors’ prices and pandering to customers’ need for next-day delivery. Again: where was the harm in that? Continue reading...

Ex-president announces World Liberty Financial and publicly addresses second apparent assassination attempt Donald Trump launched his family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, on a livestreamed interview on the social media platform X on Monday. The Republican presidential nominee gave few details about the venture but did offer his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier. Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial on Monday or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence and other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience on Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf “heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five. Continue reading...

The ex-president and RFK Jr were among the stars of this year’s bitcoin conference, where there was no line for the women’s bathroom Last week, downtown Nashville transformed into a carnival as thousands of people descended on the Bitcoin 2024 conference. The most enthusiastic attendees wore bitcoin orange or “Make America great again” red – which, as the color wheel confirms, are not all that different. Bitcoin has been around since 2009, and the conference since 2019, but 2024 marked the first year that two US presidential candidates would give keynote addresses: Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime bitcoin fan, and Donald Trump, who announced that he was pro-bitcoin in May after years of calling it a “scam” and “disaster”. The excitement was palpable: the way bitcoiners saw it, they had transformed into a voting bloc. Continue reading...

Former president said he would end persecution of crypto industry if he wins US election in November * Business live – latest updates Bitcoin has hit its highest level in more than six weeks after Donald Trump said at the weekend he would end the “persecution” of the crypto industry if he wins the US presidential election. The cryptocurrency’s price rose by more than 3% on Monday to peak at about $69,745, the highest it has been since 12 June when the currency at one point changed hands at more than $69,800. Continue reading...

Craig Wright’s case referred for potential perjury and forgery prosecution after losing legal battle with crypto firms The case of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery. In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding. Continue reading...