Threatened – LSD News

Man arrested after Sam Altman’s house hit with Molotov cocktail, OpenAI headquarters threatened

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:12:26 +0000

A screen displays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking during the 2026 Infrastructure Summit of government officials, corporate executives, and labor leaders, in Washington, March 11, 2026.

Kylie Cooper | Reuters

A man was arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home and then threatening to burn down the artificial intelligence company’s San Francisco headquarters on Friday, police said.

An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the attack in a statement and said, “Thankfully, no one was hurt.”

According to a post on X from the San Francisco Police Department, officers responded to a fire at Altman’s North Beach residence after a suspect threw an “incendiary destructive device” at his home at around 4 a.m. The device caused a fire on an exterior gate and the suspect fled on foot.

About an hour later, officers responded to a man threatening arson at the AI company’s office, recognizing the person as the same suspect from the attack at Altman’s home, according to the statement. Officers arrested the 20-year-old male suspect, with charges still pending.

“We deeply appreciate how quickly SFPD responded and the support from the city in helping keep our employees safe,” OpenAI said in its statement. “The individual is in custody, and we’re assisting law enforcement with their investigation.”

In a post on his personal blog on Friday, Altman addressed the attack and shared a photo of his family, writing that he “underestimated the power of words and narratives.” He said it has been an “extremely intense, chaotic, and high-pressure few years,” and he called for de-escalation of the “the rhetoric and tactics” within the AI industry.

“A lot of the criticism of our industry comes from sincere concern about the incredibly high stakes of this technology. This is quite valid, and we welcome good-faith criticism and debate,” Altman said. “I empathize with anti-technology sentiments and clearly technology isn’t always good for everyone. But overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine.”

The home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seen from Chestnut Street in San Francisco, April 10, 2026.

Lea Suzuki | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

The incident lands at a particularly controversial time for Altman and OpenAI.

In February, the company faced scrutiny for striking a deal with the Department of Defense after the Pentagon severed ties with AI rival Anthropic. Activists wrote in chalk at the offices of both company’s, with messages at OpenAI that urged employees to speak out against the deal.

OpenAI and Anthropic are battling for supremacy in the market for large language models. They’re collectively valued at over $1 trillion in the private market and are both pursuing potential IPOs this year, though they’re still burning billions of dollars in cash.

And in a case that’s expected to go to trial later this month, Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and Altman, claiming the company’s CEO “assiduously manipulated” him into donating $38 million on promises that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 and is seeking to have Altman removed as the company’s CEO as part of the lawsuit.

–CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this report

WATCH: Elon Musk seeks ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as part of lawsuit

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Republican Sen. Thom Tillis won’t run in 2026 after opposing Trump’s bill and being threatened with a primary challenge

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 20:12:56 +0000

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Sunday he will not seek reelection next year, an abrupt announcement that came one day after he staked out his opposition to President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts package because of its reductions to health care programs.

His decision creates a political opportunity for Democrats seeking to bolster their numbers in the 2026 midterm elections, creating a wide-open Senate race in a state that has long been a contested battleground. It could also make Tillis a wild card in a party where few lawmakers are willing to risk Trump’s wrath by opposing his agenda or actions. Trump had already been threatening him with a primary challenge.

“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis said in a lengthy statement.

Tillis, who would have been up for a third term, said he was proud of his career in public service but acknowledged the difficult political environment for those who buck their party and go it alone.

“I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability,” Tillis said in a statement.

Republicans hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate.

Trump, in social posts, had berated Tillis for being one of two Republican senators who voted on Saturday night against advancing the massive tax bill.

The Republican president accused Tillis of seeking publicity with his “no” vote and threatened to campaign against him, accusing the senator of doing nothing to help his constituents after last year’s devastating floods in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene.

“Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER,” Trump wrote.

The North Carolina Republican Party chairman, Jason Simmons, said the party wishes Tillis well and “will hold this seat for Republicans in 2026.” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chairman of the campaign arm for Senate Republicans, did not mention Tillis in a statement but said the party’s winning streak in North Carolina will continue. Scott noted that Trump won the state three times.

Democrats expressed confidence about their prospects.

Former Rep. Wiley Nickel, who announced his candidacy in April, said he was ready for any Republican challenger.

“I’ve flipped a tough seat before and we’re going to do it again,” Nickel said in a statement.

Some said Tillis’ decision is another sign of the dramatic transformation of the Republican Party under Trump, with few lawmakers critical of the president or his agenda remaining in office.

It “proves there is no space within the Republican Party to dissent over taking health care away from 11.8 million people,” said Lauren French, spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC, a political committee aligned with the chamber’s Democratic members.

Tillis rose to prominence in North Carolina when, as a second-term state House member, he quit his IBM consultant job and led the GOP’s recruitment and fundraising efforts in the chamber for the 2010 elections. Republicans won majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in 140 years.

Tillis was later elected as state House speaker and helped enact conservative policies on taxes, gun rights, regulations and abortion while serving in the role for four years. He also helped push a state constitutional referendum to ban gay marriage, which was approved by voters in 2012 but was ultimately struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.

In 2014, Tillis helped flip control of the U.S. Senate to the GOP after narrowly defeating Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. During his more than a decade in office, he championed issues such as mental health and substance abuse recovery, Medicaid expansion and support for veterans.

As a more moderate Republican, Tillis became known for his willingness to work across the aisle on some issues. That got him into trouble with his party at times, most notably in 2023 when North Carolina Republicans voted to censure him over several matters, including his challenges to certain immigration policies and his gun policy record.

“Sometimes those bipartisan initiatives got me into trouble with my own party,” Tillis said, “but I wouldn’t have changed a single one.”

Ohio doctor threatened after pro-vaccine TikTok video

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 10:56:00 +0000

Ohio doctor threatened after pro-vaccine TikTok video – CBS News

Watch CBS News

An Ohio doctor who received a flood of threats over a pro-vaccine social media post is standing by her message. In a playful TikTok video, Dr. Nicole Baldwin showed the benefits of vaccines, and said they do not cause autism. But that prompted a barrage of hateful responses. Despite scientific evidence that there’s no link between vaccines and autism, a recent poll found 46% of parents are still unsure. Dr. Jon LaPook joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss how doctors can counter misinformation about vaccines.

Trump’s crypto agenda is being threatened by his pursuit of personal profits

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Sat, 10 May 2025 18:22:13 +0000

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he gives remarks outside the West Wing at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 8, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Reuters

President Donald Trump is standing in his own way when it comes to passing crypto legislation.

Lawmakers this week rejected the GENIUS Act — a bill meant to establish federal rules for stablecoins — due in part to concerns that President Trump’s personal cryptocurrency ventures have created an unprecedented conflict of interest.

“Currently, people who wish to cultivate influence with the president can enrich him personally by buying cryptocurrency he owns or controls,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a statement to CNBC explaining his opposition to the bill. “This is a profoundly corrupt scheme. It endangers our national security and erodes public trust in government.”

Stablecoins are digital currencies that are pegged to the value of other assets, like the U.S. dollar.

Getting anything passed in Congress is a steep uphill battle for Republicans given their razor-thin majority in the House, filibuster-proof requirement in the Senate, and Democrats’ increasingly unified stance against President Trump’s agenda. But enough Democrats appeared to be on board with a stablecoin law to bring about a rare bipartisan win for the president.

That’s until $TRUMP got in the way.

The president’s meme coin, which he launched just before the inauguration in January, has added billions of dollars of paper worth to his coffers. Its value soared last month after the project ran a promotion offering top $TRUMP holders a dinner with the president and a “VIP White House tour.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called it a “pay-for-play scheme.” First Lady Melania Trump has a coin as well.

The GENIUS bill failed to advance in the Senate on Thursday. It needed 60 votes to move to the Senate floor for final passage. The final tally was 48 in favor and 49 against. Three senators didn’t vote.

‘Ongoing self-dealing’

Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware was one of the four. She pointed directly at Trump’s financial entanglements.

“I also remain concerned about the ongoing self-dealing and financial conflicts of interest being carried out by the Trump family,” she wrote in a statement on Thursday.

It’s not just about the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins. There’s also the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial, which was established last year and launched a stablecoin just as the administration pushed for looser regulations on digital assets.

Reports have indicated that Abu Dhabi-based MGX is using Trump’s stablecoin for a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance, creating yet another potential conflict of interest for a sitting president.

For some investors and entrepreneurs in the crypto industry, the president’s pursuit of personal profits is creating a major impediment to long-awaited advancements. After years of setbacks during the Biden administration, the crypto lobby became a powerful force in funding Trump’s 2024 campaign and in successfully backing industry-friendly candidates for Congress.

“It’s unfortunate that personal business is getting in the way of good policy,” said Ryan Gilbert, founder of fintech venture fund Launchpad Capital. “I would hope that everybody in the administration, including the president, gets out of the way of good policy.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. At a press conference on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, when asked about the meme coin dinner, that “the president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws.”

“The president is a successful businessman, and I think it’s one of the many reasons that people reelected him back to this office,” Leavitt said.

A number of top Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have joined the parade of critics, targeting President Trump’s personal pursuits. Gillibrand helped introduce the GENIUS Act earlier this year, but she said this week that there are “a number of outstanding issues that needed to be addressed before the bill could pass the full Senate.”

“I believe it is essential to the future of the U.S. economy and to everyday Americans that we enact strict stablecoin regulations and consumer protections where none currently exist,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “I remain extremely confident and hopeful that very soon we can finish the job.”

Sen. Blumenthal called for an investigation into Trump-linked coins, demanding financial records from World Liberty Financial and slamming the president for “the attempted use of the White House to host competitions to prop up the value of $TRUMP.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, had supported the GENIUS Act but said he couldn’t move forward this week after Republicans declined to provide more time to negotiate.

“Without more time to at least finish the bill, there was no true bipartisan path forward,” he wrote on X.

Launchpad’s Gilbert said the GENIUS Act is just the first piece. More broadly, the president’s conflicts could have an impact on hopes for other legislative achievements and deregulation efforts as well as the reputation of the U.S. crypto industry on the world stage.

“We will be the laughing stocks of the world for this particular reason, and it will hold back continued investment and innovation,” Gilbert said. “There was hope for the past six months that that we could lead in the United States, and that investment should pour into crypto-related businesses, and then it will be simpler and doable again, for all companies to take a lead and to invest in crypto assets.”

However, he said, “if the GENIUS Act doesn’t pass, we’re back to square one.”

WATCH: Ether surges nearly 25% for its best week in four years: CNBC Crypto World

Trump’s Threatened Tariffs Are So Large, 10% Feels Like a Relief

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Wed, 07 May 2025 10:07:04 +0000

There has been a mantra spreading among weary corporate executives who are becoming resigned to President Trump’s tariffs while still hoping to avoid the worst of their effects: Ten percent is the new zero.

The statement refers to the 10 percent tariff that Mr. Trump put in place on most U.S. imports one month ago. Such a significant increase in U.S. tariffs would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But it no longer seems like such a big deal, compared with the truly large tariffs that Mr. Trump has already imposed or threatened elsewhere.

Mr. Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2 that he was planning tariffs of 10 percent to 60 percent on dozens of America’s trading partners set off a rout in the bond markets and a flight from the U.S. dollar as investors panicked at the prospect of an economically devastating trade war. Mr. Trump also ratcheted up tariffs on China to a minimum of 145 percent amid a trade spat with Beijing, bringing much of the trade between the countries to a halt.

That turmoil appears to have moderated Mr. Trump’s impulses somewhat. The president quickly paused tariffs on most countries, giving them 90 days to negotiate trade deals instead.

Mr. Trump also granted a lucrative exemption from China tariffs for makers of electronics and offered some limited relief for automakers. And he has hinted that he could do more, saying he likes to be “flexible.”

Investors have lapped up any signs of good news, even insubstantial ones. Stock markets have now regained nearly all of the losses they sustained after April 2, buoyed by comments from Trump administration officials that they are working to close trade deals with allies and looking for an opening to negotiate with China.

The speed with which investors have come to accept Mr. Trump’s tariffs reflects an increasing embrace of tariffs as a policy tool. It also shows a decreasing tolerance in America for the predatory trade practices of countries like China, which has dominated global industries and systematically put rival manufacturers around the world out of business.

But it also indicates something about Mr. Trump and his negotiating style. By threatening gigantic tariffs in early April and then walking them back, the president seems to have increased the acceptance, at least in some circles, of the significant tariffs that remain in place.

This is a classic example of the psychological effect known as anchoring, when a certain piece of information, like a high number thrown out in the course of a negotiation, can reset a whole frame of reference.

Sekoul Krastev, a co-founder of the Decision Lab, a company that works with governments and organizations to apply lessons from behavioral science, said the anchoring effect was one of the more rigorous and tested in behavioral sciences. In all types of contexts, researchers have found that by throwing out a large number, they can quickly reset people’s expectations of what is normal and appropriate.

For example, Mr. Krastev said, a car salesman who wants to sell you a $50,000 car will show you an $80,000 one first. But the value doesn’t even have to be related to the decision being made. In experiments, people asked to think about the height of Mount Everest were more willing afterward to spend more on a sofa than they would have spent previously, he said.

“I do think it’s at play,” he said. “Let’s say you set an anchor for really high tariffs — that’s going to make the range of acceptable tariffs much higher than before.”

The truth, of course, is that the tariffs currently in effect still constitute both a major change for global trade and a huge tax increase for the country. The United States still has a 10 percent “universal” tariff in effect on most imports globally, as well as 25 percent tariffs on imported cars, metals and goods from Canada and Mexico. Overall, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, consumers face an average effective tariff rate of 28 percent, the highest since 1901.

Those tariffs may seem manageable compared with triple-digit tariffs now in effect against Chinese products and the double-digit tariffs that have been paused against dozens of other countries. But for some companies, tariffs of 10 to 25 percent are still enough to erase profit margins, stall expansion or hiring plans or even push them out of business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has warned that many small businesses in particular might not survive.

Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles this week, Jane Fraser, the chief executive of Citigroup, said companies could withstand lower tariffs, though trade uncertainty had forced them to pause investment and hiring.

“If it is 10 percent, most of the clients we talk to say, ‘Yeah, we can absorb that,’” she said. “If it is 25 percent, not so much.”

Some of the moves that investors are interpreting as good news are also fairly minor retrenchments in a major increase in trade protectionism. The exception given to automakers last Tuesday, for example, was relatively small, though it sent the price of some automakers’ shares higher that day. Mr. Trump gave an exception for tariffs on auto parts that were equal to 15 percent of a car’s value for the first year, which shrinks to 10 percent in the second year before disappearing in Year 3. Car companies were also given relief from a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum, but only if they were paying a 25 percent tariff on foreign cars or parts.

And while Beijing and Washington seemed to express more openness late last week to finding a solution to the trade standoff between the United States and China, the countries have a long way to go. Formal negotiations have not even started, and the United States has serious trade disputes with China.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers that there was no movement yet with China. “China we have not engaged in negotiations with as of yet,” he said.

The Trump administration might choose to quickly drop some of its tariffs on China as a good-will gesture once the countries restart negotiations — but tariffs have risen so much that the United States might have to cut its tariffs by more than 100 percentage points to meaningfully restart trade.

Perhaps most important, despite being persuaded on occasion to show flexibility, Mr. Trump is still a self-described “tariff man,” reflexively drawn toward the power of an economic tool that he thinks is an effective way to persuade global companies to bring their factories to the United States.

Mr. Trump continues to find ways to deploy tariffs that few had anticipated. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, he proposed adding 100 percent tariffs to movies produced outside the country and said Hollywood was dying a “very fast death,” arguing that this threatened U.S. national security. On Monday, the president said that tariffs on pharmaceuticals would be coming in the next few weeks and that he had already decided on the rate.

In a speech on Sunday, Maros Sefcovic, the European Union’s commissioner for trade, said that “more U.S. tariff actions could well be on their way,” pointing to investigations into lumber, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, critical minerals and trucks.

If all those investigations led to tariffs, he said, 97 percent of E.U. exports to the United States would be subject to taxes.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Trump insisted that he would preserve the threat of tariffs, no matter what.

Asked if he would take the possibility that some tariffs would be permanent off the table, Mr. Trump demurred.

“No, I wouldn’t do that because if somebody thought they were going to come off the table, why would they build in the United States?” he said.

Jeanna Smialek, Alan Rappeport and Tony Romm contributed reporting.

Ethereum Price Threatened With Sharp Drop To $1,400, Here’s Why

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 05:08:54 +0000

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Ethereum might be on track to facing renewed pressure, according to an interesting technical outlook. Despite short bursts of recovery attempts, the broader market structure is still trying to flip in favor of bulls, but price movement shows that the bears are still in control. Notably, a recent technical analysis posted by crypto analyst Youriverse on the TradingView platform highlights a potential sharp drop in the price of Ethereum towards $1,400 if the current downward trend continues.

Strong Rejection From Key Fibonacci Zone Hints At Persistent Resistance

Technical analysis shows that the Ethereum price chart is currently characterized by a noticeable Fair Value Gap (FVG) on the 4-hour timeframe. This interesting gap was left behind after a steep 10% drop last Sunday, marking a strong area of seller dominance.

Stochastic RSI Weakness Suggests Possible Downturn Ahead For Ethereum

In addition to the Fair Value Gap and Ethereum’s struggle within the golden pocket of the Fibonacci retracement zone, the Stochastic RSI is now introducing another layer of bearish pressure to the current outlook. This momentum oscillator, which measures the relative strength of recent price movements, is approaching the overbought region on the daily timeframe.

Tech companies most threatened by Trump are donating to his inauguration fund

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 23:14:33 +0000

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump smiles at the crowd during the National Guard Association of the United States’ 146th General Conference & Exhibition at Huntington Place Convention Center on Aug. 26, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan.

Emily Elconin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have a particularly sketchy past with President-elect Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in a heated legal battle with Elon Musk, who became one of Trump’s biggest backers and is poised to have an outsized role in his second administration.

That all helps explain announcements this week regarding donations to Trump’s inauguration fund.

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman said in a statement Friday. Altman said he’s planning to make a personal donation of $1 million to the fund, the company confirmed.

Meta donated $1 million to the inauguration, the company confirmed to CNBC, weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump privately at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Amazon is also planning to donate $1 million, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Trump has been a vocal critic of tech companies, and he signaled earlier this month that he won’t shy away from antitrust enforcement. The incoming president nominated Gail Slater, who advised Trump on tech policy during his first term, to head the Department of Justice’s antitrust arm.

“Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump wrote in a Dec. 4 post on Truth Social announcing Slater’s nomination. “I was proud to fight these abuses in my First Term, and our Department of Justice’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership.”

Some of Trump’s most hostile words in the past have been directed at Amazon and Meta.

In his first term, Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos and his companies, Amazon and The Washington Post, accusing them of dodging taxes or publishing “fake news,” among other things. Trump also repeatedly pointed the finger at Amazon for its use of the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages to customers, claiming the company contributed to the post office’s budget problems.

The animosity went both ways. In 2019, Amazon blamed Trump’s “behind-the-scenes attacks” against the company for its loss of a multibillion-dollar Department of Defense contract, then called JEDI. And prior to the 2016 election, Bezos criticized Trump’s behavior, saying it “erodes our democracy.” After the then-Republican candidate accused Bezos of using the Post as a “tax shelter,” Bezos, who also owns the Blue Origin space company, in a tweet offered to send Trump into space on one of his rockets.

Blue Origin competes for government contracts with Musk’s SpaceX.

At The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Dec. 4, Bezos said he expects a more friendly regulatory environment in the upcoming administration.

“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said on stage. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I’m going to help him.”

Trump has called Bezos “Jeff Bozo.” His preferred nickname for the Meta CEO is “Zuckerschmuck.”

Following Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, he sued Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as their respective CEOs in class-action lawsuits. All three companies booted Trump’s accounts from platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.

Trump has long accused Facebook of silencing conservative voices. In March, he called the platform “the enemy of the people along with a lot of the media,” in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Now that Trump is heading back to the White House and has been cozying up with Musk, the rest of the tech sector seems keen on currying favor. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and others all publicly congratulated Trump following his victory in November.

Microsoft declined to comment on whether it’s contributing to the inauguration. Representatives from Apple and Google didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

For OpenAI and Altman, the concerns are a bit different. Altman and Musk were co-founders of OpenAI, which initially was a nonprofit. The two have since publicly split, with Altman remaining as CEO of OpenAI and Musk starting a rival artificial intelligence company called xAI.

In March, Musk sued OpenAI — and co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman — alleging breach of contract and fiduciary duty. He claimed the project had been transformed into a for-profit entity that’s largely controlled by principal shareholder Microsoft, and is suing to thwart the change in structure.

OpenAI clapped back on Friday, claiming in a blog post titled “Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit,” that in 2017 Musk “not only wanted, but actually created, a for-profit” to serve as the company’s proposed new structure.

Altman’s coming concern is that Musk spent more than $250 million to help boost Trump’s campaign, and is now poised to help lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” In that role, Musk could influence how AI is regulated in ways that favor his businesses.

On Dec. 5, Trump announced that venture investor and podcaster David Sacks, a friend of Musk’s, will join the Trump administration as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

WATCH: Trump’s Cabinet will have more billionaires than any in history

Trump has threatened to kill EV tax credits but auto industry shows no intention to stop shift to electric vehicles

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 09:52:09 +0000

If President-elect Donald Trump makes good on his threat to kill federal tax credits for electric vehicle purchases, it’s likely that fewer buyers will choose EVs.

Yet tax credits or not, auto companies show no intention of retreating from a steady transition away from gas-burning cars and trucks, especially given the enormous investment they have already made: Since 2021, the industry has spent at least $160 billion on planning, designing and building electric vehicles, according to the Center for Auto Research.

In campaigning for the presidency, Trump condemned the federal tax for EV buyers — up to $7,500 per vehicle — as part of a “green new scam” that would devastate the auto industry. His transition team is reportedly working on plans to abolish the tax credits and to roll back the more stringent fuel-economy rules that were pushed through by the Biden administration. It is far from clear, though, that the Trump administration could actually rescind the credits.

Trump’s argument — one that most economists dispute — is that a rapid U.S. shift toward electric vehicles would lead to most EVs being made in China and would swell prices for America’s auto buyers. He has said he would redirect federal revenue recaptured from a canceled tax credit to build roads, bridges and dams.

Ending the credits, which were a key provision of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, almost certainly would reduce EV sales, which have been growing in the United States this year, though not nearly as fast as automakers had expected. The slowing growth has forced nearly all auto companies to scale back EV production and delay construction of battery factories that are no longer needed to handle a more gradual transition.

Jonathan Chariff, an executive at Midway Ford in Miami, one of the company’s top EV-selling dealers, said he thinks ending the tax credits would severely hurt sales. The credits reduce monthly payments, he noted, making an EV closer in price to a gasoline counterpart.

“It becomes more affordable,” he said. “Otherwise, those individuals won’t be able to afford the payments.”

Chariff calculated that the $7,500 credit could shrink a buyer’s monthly payment by between $200 and $250, allowing many to afford an EV. On average, electric vehicles sell for about $57,000, compared with around $48,000 for a gasoline vehicle, according to Cox Automotive. (Though they cost more up front, EVs generally are cheaper to operate because maintenance costs are lower, and in most cases electricity is much cheaper than gasoline.)

To qualify for the credits, EVs must be built in North America. EVs that contain battery parts or minerals from China or any other nation that is deemed an economic or security threat to the United States qualify for only half the federal credit. Because of that restriction, most of the 75 EV models on sale in the U.S. are not eligible for the full credit. All EVs, though, can receive the full credit toward a lease — a benefit that Trump likely will target. Some plug-in gas-electric hybrids qualify for the credits, too.

Asked about the president-elect’s opposition to EV tax credits, Trump’s transition team would say only that he has “a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail.”

Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump and co-leader of a commission that intends to identify ways to vastly shrink the federal government, appears to be aligned with the president-elect in canceling the tax credits. Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla who spent an estimated $200 million to help elect Trump, has said that ending the credits would hurt his rival companies more than it would Tesla, the U.S. sales leader in EVs by far.

“I think it would be devastating for our competitors and would hurt Tesla slightly,” he said.

Even so, it might prove difficult for Trump to rescind the credits without help from the new Republican-led Congress, many of whose members represent districts where the EV credit is popular. Trump has floated the idea of using a constitutional theory by which a president could decide whether or not to spend money Congress has appropriated. The president-elect has promoted the concept of “impoundment,” under which congressional appropriations set a ceiling — but not a floor — for spending federal money.

John Helveston, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies electric vehicles and policies, said that in his view, the impoundment theory wouldn’t apply in this circumstance because the EV tax credits affect government revenue and are not an appropriation.

In any case, Helveston said he doubts Trump could persuade Republican lawmakers to remove the credits from the Inflation Reduction Act because so many congressional districts benefit from the tax breaks.

“Cutting the EV tax credit makes it harder for the battery factory in their town to sell their product,” he noted.

A 1974 federal law bars a president from substituting his own view of spending programs, said David Rapallo, associate law professor at Georgetown University. If Trump cancelled the tax credits, Rapallo said, it would be challenged in court.

Research by J.D. Power shows that once people know about the tax credits, they’re far more likely to consider an electric vehicle. In the meantime, federal subsides, not only for buyer tax credits but also for converting factories to EV production, are helping General Motors, Ford and Stellantis make the enormously expensive transition away from gasoline vehicles. It’s also helping Detroit’s Big Three compete with foreign rivals, notably Chinese automakers that received government subsidies and had a head start in developing EVs, said Sam Fiorani, a vice president at the consultancy AutoForecast Solutions.

At present, Ford and GM, while profitable overall, are losing money on EVs, unlike Tesla, though both expect their electric-vehicle operations to generate positive earnings in the coming years as costs ease and more vehicles are sold.

Eliminating the federal tax credits, Fiorani suggested, would “hurt the Detroit Three in the long run as they become less competitive against global players making the technological leaps” for electric vehicles,

GM, Ford and Stellantis all declined to comment, though their executives have said in the past that they will continue to develop EVs while still selling gasoline vehicles and hybrids. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents most automakers, has written to Trump in support of the tax credits, arguing that they help ensure that the U.S. “continues to lead in manufacturing critical to our national and economic security.”

Hyundai, the Korean automaker, which has spent more than $7 billion on an EV factory in Georgia, could also suffer. The company sped up construction of the huge plant near Savannah and is now building EVs in the United States to try to capitalize on the tax credits for buyers.

In the end, most automakers say their ambitious plans for transitioning to electric vehicles won’t change regardless of policy changes in Washington.

“We plan for the long term, so political considerations aren’t a factor in how we approach product development or capital investments,” said David Christ, vice president of Toyota North America, which is building a battery factory in North Carolina.

Coinbase threatened by bitcoin ETFs after almost 400% surge in stock last year

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 03:58:16 +0000

Brian Armstrong, chief executive officer of Coinbase Global Inc., speaks during the Messari Mainnet summit in New York, on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Now that the SEC has approved the creation of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, Coinbase’s position in the crypto market is poised to take a dramatic turn.

In the weeks ahead, Coinbase will help shepherd some of the biggest names in asset management, including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and WisdomTree, into the digital asset ecosystem as their custodial partner of choice. That means Coinbase will be central to the storage and safekeeping of the assets for those firms.

While custody revenue presents a big growth opportunity for Coinbase in the near term, some industry analysts are concerned that the company’s core transaction business is at risk due to the myriad ways investors will be able to access bitcoin. Instead of having to go to an asset exchange such as Kraken, Binance, or Coinbase, they’ll be able to invest in the digital currency through the same mechanism they already use to buy stock and bond ETFs.

In a report Dec. 4, analysts at Bernstein predicted that in less than five years, 10% of the global supply of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, or roughly $300 billion, will be managed by ETFs. The firm called it the “largest pipe ever built between traditional financial markets and crypto financial markets.”

In 2023, Coinbase’s stock was one of the top performers in the tech industry, soaring almost 400%. Much of that rally was tied to bitcoin, which increased 150%. But part of the outperformance relative to bitcoin was due to the excitement that new ETFs would drive more interest in crypto and be a boon for Coinbase.

“ETFs should expand the pie and bring new people and institutions into the cryptoeconomy,” Coinbase Chief Operating Officer Emilie Choi said on the company’s most recent earnings call in November. “They should add credibility to the market, and we should see increased liquidity and market stability as we’ve seen with other asset classes such as gold.”

From June 15, the day that BlackRock — with its $9 trillion in assets under management — filed for a so-called spot bitcoin ETF and named Coinbase its crypto custodian, shares in the exchange rose from around $54 to over $170 by the end of the year.

JPMorgan analysts wrote in a November report that Coinbase would be a key beneficiary of the coming ETF boom, given the immediate upside of custody fees from asset managers.

“We estimate Bitcoin custody and surveillance revenue will more than offset decline in Bitcoin trading volume as assets migrate to ETFs,” the analysts said.

Some of the momentum on Wall Street has faded to start 2024, with the stock down 14% since the calendar turned. According to Mizuho analysts, there could be more pain to come.

“With the hype around Bitcoin ETFs likely to reach a climax in the coming weeks, COIN bulls could experience a rough awakening when they realize how minimal the revenue impact is,” Mizuho wrote in a note Thursday.

Mizuho’s analysts have the equivalent of a sell rating on the stock and were bearish throughout last year’s rally, finishing 2023 with a $54 price target, by far the lowest among analysts tracked by FactSet.

The battle for market share

Almost half of Coinbase’s revenue comes from the fees it charges on transactions, meaning the company needs people to keep using the exchange to buy and trade bitcoin and other digital currencies.

In the third quarter in 2023, total transaction revenue accounted for 46% of net revenue. However, Coinbase has been diversifying into new businesses. In 2022, transactions made up closer to 75% of revenue.

More than one-quarter of Coinbase’s revenue in the third quarter came from interest income on the exchange’s stablecoin reserves, including Circle’s U.S. dollar-pegged USDC coin. Stablecoin revenue more than doubled from a year earlier primarily due to rising interest rates.

“A few years ago, our business at Coinbase was 95% trading fees, and we made a big effort around the time it went public to start diversifying our revenue,” CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC in a recent interview. “What’s great is that now we have multiple sources of revenue — some of them in a high interest rate environment go up, some of them in a low interest rate environment go up.”

Still, transaction fees remain a key income driver for the exchange. And unlike trading platform Robinhood, which enables investments in a wide array of asset types, Coinbase doesn’t allow for trading of ETFs.

“Spot bitcoin ETFs appear poised to take volume away from crypto exchanges,” said Bryan Armour, director of passive strategies research for North America at Morningstar.

JPMorgan anticipates that new account growth will slow as “novice crypto investors get their initial exposure and possibly final exposure through ETFs rather than Coinbase,” adding that many of these neophyte traders will never go beyond bitcoin, “thus never needing the services of a Coinbase.”

Mizuho sees the income from custody fees as fairly modest given how far investors have pushed up the stock. The firm predicts ETF approval may add just $25 million to $30 million in annual custody fees, with another $200 million to $210 million of new revenue “if incremental Bitcoin inflows generate additional spot trading opportunities.”

With a collective gain of up to $240 million in additional annual revenue, “this represents just mid-to-high single-digit percentage upside vs. current 2024 consensus,” the Mizuho analysts wrote. They said they “do not believe the nearly 400% increase in the stock in anticipation of ETF approval justifies our reasonable estimate for the ETFs’ actual contribution to revenue.”

A Coinbase spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed statement that, in addition to custody fees, the company will make money by providing services such as agency trading, matching and settlement, and financing to ETF issuers.

“The platform believes that spot ETFs will be a positive catalyst for the entire crypto space, adding credibility, increasing liquidity, and bringing new participants and institutions into the cryptoeconomy,” the spokesperson said, reiterating prior comments from Coinbase executives.

Competition could also create pricing pressure.

ARK, Invesco, Fidelity, WisdomTree, and Valkyrie are all offering deals that involve fee-free trading for a certain period of time. Others are opting for discounted fees.

Coinbase’s transaction fee varies, with a max of 0.6% on transactions up to $10,000 in value. In the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call, Choi said that Coinbase doesn’t plan to reduce transaction fees to make them more competitive with other platforms where ETFs are being traded at significantly lower prices.

The transaction charges on Coinbase also vary between its Pro platform and the retail app, where fees are higher. For retail transactions up to $1,000, the fee ranges from 1.5% to 3%.

However, JPMorgan analysts said greater efficiency and transparency in equity markets, paired with lower costs to execute, could drive more cryptocurrency trading to ETFs over time, which could ultimately “pressure Coinbase to lower commissions and to narrow trading spreads, reversing the multi-quarter increase we’ve witnessed in Coinbase’s retail revenue capture.”

Still, Coinbase has its believers among crypto enthusiasts, such as Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures.

“They are essential infrastructure in terms of custody, trading, and surveillance for the majority of the ETF proposals,” Carter said. “Even though it might affect their fees at the margin I think they are still winners here.”

WATCH: Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton on changes in bitcoin trading

Clarence Thomas Threatened to Resign Over Salary Concerns in 2000

LSD News Szerkesztőség — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 03:25:37 +0000

Justice Clarence Thomas pressed congressional lawmakers for a higher salary early in his tenure on the Supreme Court, threatening to resign and inspiring a campaign by Republican backers to meet his demands, according to a memo addressed to the chief justice in June 2000.

The memo, reported earlier by ProPublica and obtained by The New York Times, underscores the financial pressures Justice Thomas may have faced at the time and laid bare some of the accompanying political risks were Congress to increase the pay of the justices. The memo was contained in Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s papers held at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

According to the memo, written by a top official of the federal courts system, L. Ralph Mecham, Justice Thomas broached the issue of pay with Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida. Salaries at the Supreme Court were unsatisfactory, the justice said, and “one or more justices will soon leave” if compensation were not increased.

Those concerns prompted Mr. Stearns’s office to seek help from a lobbying group affiliated with the Podesta brothers to draft a bill that would bolster justices’ pay. In doing so, a lobbyist asked for guidance from an array of federal judges, raising reservations about the request and worry about how best to respond.

In 2000, Justice Thomas’s salary, that of an associate justice on the court, was $173,600 a year — more than $300,000 today. (Justice Thomas and the other associate justices are paid $285,400 a year now.)

In a letter to Justice Thomas obtained by ProPublica, Mr. Stearns outlined the specifics of their conversation, vowing to examine the issue of pay. “I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the Constitution properly interpreted.”

“His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Mr. Stearns told ProPublica in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the memo addressed to Chief Justice Rehnquist, Mr. Mecham cited the conversation and asked for his advice in handling “this delicate matter.”

Under Mr. Stearns’s proposal, Mr. Mecham wrote, an amendment would separate the pay of justices from that of all other judges, as well as from those of members of Congress and the cabinet. He would also establish a commission that would study the salaries of justices.

Mr. Mecham’s letter to the chief justice questioned the wisdom of even pushing Congress to approve a pay raise for Supreme Court justices.

“Within the judiciary, that could run the risk of looking like a dog in the manger type approach,” he wrote. “To Congress, it could be seen as another judiciary effort at delinkage from congressional pay, which even our best friends have refused to do, although it would be limited solely to justices, which might make it more palatable. But I am not at all sure.”

“From a tactical point of view, given the public statements made largely by Democratic lobbyists,” Mr. Mecham continued, “it will not take the Democrats and liberals in Congress very long to figure out that the prime beneficiaries who might otherwise leave the court presumably are Justices Thomas and Scalia.”

That year, Chief Justice Rehnquist echoed those concerns about pay in a year-end report that cited “what I consider to be the most pressing issue facing the judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries.”

The revelations about Justice Thomas’s complaints add to the debate about ethics on the Supreme Court and his personal finances, which have repeatedly led him to seek the counsel and support of billionaire donors.

Around that time, Justice Thomas was carrying heavy debt. A year earlier, Justice Thomas took out a $267,230 personal loan from Anthony Welters, a health care industry magnate, to buy a recreational vehicle that for years he failed to repay in full.

Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.