Apple has reportedly dropped out of NFL Sunday Ticket negotiations

In 2021, Apple was considered the frontrunner to secure streaming rights to the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket package. Now, a year later, the company has reportedly dropped out of negotiations. The tidbit comes from a Puck article about Bob …

Apple has reportedly dropped out of NFL Sunday Ticket negotiations

In 2021, Apple was considered the frontrunner to secure streaming rights to the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket package. Now, a year later, the company has reportedly dropped out of negotiations. The tidbit comes from a Puck article about Bob …

Here’s everything Sam Bankman-Fried is accused of by the US government

On Monday evening, Bahamian authorities arrested FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried at the request of the US government. The following morning, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Department of Justice (DOJ) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed formal civil and criminal charges against Bankman-Fried in “parallel actions.” It was a lot to take in all at once, so below Engadget has broken up current charges against SBF by agency, with some additional context provided.

Those indictments likely represent only the start of Bankman-Fried’s troubles. In addition to the charges it announced on Tuesday, the SEC said it was investigating Bankman-Fried for other securities violations. The agency also announced that it’s actively examining the actions of other FTX executives and employees. As more charges are unsealed, Engadget will continue to update this article.

Securities and Exchange Commission

The Securities and Exchange Commission accused SBF of defrauding FTX investors and customers of more than $1.9 billion. Starting as early as May 2019 until as recently as this past November, “Bankman-Fried was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customers funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire,” the SEC said.

All the while, Bankman-Fried portrayed himself as a responsible business leader building a safe trading platform with “sophisticated, automated measures to protect customer assets.” In reality, the SEC says, “Bankman-Fried orchestrated a fraud to conceal the diversion of customer funds to his privately-held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research.”

Bankman-Fried told investors and customers FTX’s sister company was just another platform on the exchange with no special privileges to speak of. “These statements were false and misleading,” according to the SEC. Alameda had access to a “virtually unlimited ‘line of credit” unknowingly funded by FTX customers. In May 2022, when Alameda’s lenders demanded the firm repay loans worth billions of dollars, Bankman-Fried allegedly directed FTX to divert even more money to the hedge fund.

The SEC seeks to bar Bankman-Friend from trading securities in the future. The agency also wants to seize his ill-gotten gains and bar him from acting as an officer or director at another company.

Current FTX CEO John Ray III testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday — SBF had said he would attend the hearing before his arrest. Ray spoke to some of the allegations detailed by the SEC. “This is really old-fashioned embezzlement,” he told the panel. “We’ve lost $8 billion. I don’t trust a single piece of paper in this organization.”

Department of Justice

In addition to civil charges, Bankman-Fried faces a criminal indictment from the Justice Department. On Tuesday, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York filed eight charges against the former executive, including multiple counts of wire fraud. The Justice Department alleges SBF conspired with other individuals to defraud investors by sharing misleading information about FTX and Alameda’s financial condition. Prosecutors further accused him of attempting to commit commodities and securities fraud. On top of that, Bankman-Fried allegedly broke federal election laws by donating more than is legally allowed and in the names of other people.

SBF spoke about his political donations in a recent interview with journalist Tiffany Fong. “I donated to both parties. I donated about the same amount to both parties,” he said. “All my Republican donations were dark. The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to Republicans.”

It’s worth emphasizing how serious the criminal charges against Bankman-Fried are. For context, a federal judge recently sentenced Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes to 11 years in prison for defrauding the company’s investors and patients. Meanwhile, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the startup’s former chief operating officer, was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for his role in the scheme. Sam Bankman-Fried stands accused of defrauding investors of almost $2 billion, or about twice what investors lost to Theranos.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Rounding out the current charges against Bankman-Fried, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused the former executive of using Alameda Research to “surreptitiously” siphon customer funds. “At Bankman-Fried’s direction, FTX executives created features in the underlying code for FTX that allowed Alameda to maintain an essentially unlimited line of credit on FTX,” the regulator alleges. It adds that Alameda had other “unfair” advantages, including an exemption from the platform’s auto-liquidation risk management process.

As early as May 2019, SBF and “at least one” other Alameda executive directed the firm to use FTX customer funds to trade on competing platforms and buy “high-risk” digital assets. Additionally, the CFTC alleges that Bankman-Fried and his cohorts “took hundreds of millions of dollars in poorly-documented ‘loans’ from Alameda,” which they then used to purchase real estate and make political donations.

For his actions, the CFTC is seeking to ban Bankman-Fried from trading derivatives and impose civil penalties against him. It also wants to bar him from acting as a director or officer in the future.

Bipartisan bill targets crypto money laundering in wake of FTX collapse

US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Roger Marshall have introduced a bipartisan bill designed to crack down on illegal uses of cryptocurrency. If passed, The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act would extend aspects of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), a Nix…

Twitter is shutting down Revue, the newsletter platform it bought last year

One day after Jack Dorsey took to Revue to share his thoughts on the Twitter Files, the company announced it would shut down the newsletter platform early next year. “From January 18th, 2023, it will no longer be possible to access your Revue account,” Revue said on Wednesday. “On that date, Revue will shut down and all data will be deleted.”

Twitter bought Revue at the start of 2021. At the time, the company argued the acquisition was a natural expansion of its platform. And for a while, it had a point since paid newsletters were all the rage last year. Following the purchase, Twitter moved to quickly integrate the two platforms closer together. At first, the company added Revue signup buttons to Twitter profiles. A month later, it rolled out a feature that allowed users to sign up for Revue newsletters directly from tweets. 

But all of that was before Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the newsletter goldrush died out. The billionaire has said one of his goals for Twitter has been to simplify the app. To that end, a handful of features, including Moments and “tweeted from” labels, have been put on the chopping block in recent weeks. So it’s not surprising to see Revue get discontinued as well. 

If you use Revue to run a paid newsletter, on December 20th Twitter will set all paid subscriptions to cancel at the end of their billing cycle. “This is to prevent your subscribers being charged for Revue content after the point where it is no longer possible to send newsletters from Revue.”

Update 2:47PM ET: A previous version of this article said Revue was shutting down on January 12th, a date that reflected an error on the company’s website.  

Apple is reportedly preparing to allow third-party app stores on iOS

Apple is reportedly preparing to open iOS to competing app stores. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company’s software and services teams are redesigning the platform to “open up key elements.” That effort is likely to end in Apple giving iPhone and iPad users the option to download third-party apps without going through the App Store. In turn, that would allow developers to avoid the company’s infamous 30 and 15 percent commissions on payments. Gurman reports the forthcoming charges are primarily designed to placate European Union lawmakers, who recently passed the bloc’s sweeping Digital Markets and Services Act, and will be initially implemented on the continent before potentially rolling out to other regions.     

Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.  

According to Gurman, Apple plans to have the changes ready to release alongside iOS 17 next year. Companies have until 2024 to be in full compliance with the Digital Markets Act. The legislation is particularly problematic for Apple, as it outlaws many of the speedbumps the company has relied on to make it difficult for consumers to leave iOS. For instance, the act calls for interoperability between different messaging platforms and equal access for outside developers to core operating system features. Critically, it also mandates that platform holders allow for sideloading. 

Apple has consistently lobbied against sideloading, calling it a security and privacy risk. Gurman reports the company is considering whether it should enforce certain security requirements on software distributed outside the App Store. “Such apps also may need to be verified by Apple — a process that could carry a fee,” he suggests.  

There are other major changes that could come to iOS as a direct result of the Digital Markets Act. Apple could open up major APIs and features, including those that control the iPhone’s NFC and camera technologies, to outside developers. Historically, only the company’s Wallet app and Apple Pay service have had access to the iPhone’s NFC chip. What’s more, the company is considering whether to drop its longstanding requirement that third-party browsers must use its WebKit framework. Apple may also further open up its Find My Network to competitors like Tile.

At the same time, it appears there are some golden eggs the tech giant may be much more reluctant to give away. Specifically, Gurman reports RCS integration within iMessage is currently not on the table. Google has pushed the messaging protocol for years, going so far as to criticize Apple publically for not adopting it. How likely Apple is to make those same concessions in the US is hard to tell. Gurman notes the work the company is undertaking could “lay the groundwork” for similar changes in other markets. However, while American lawmakers are considering similar legislation to the Digital Markets Act, their version, the Open App Markets Act, has yet to pass.  

Lyft’s latest EV incentives include an earnings bonus for California drivers

When Lyft first pledged to go fully electric by the end of 2030, the company detailed a plan that involved an “extremely hard” push on incentives for drivers. Now, more than two years later, the company is rolling out a new EV bundle to encourage drive…

Huawei signs a patent cross-licensing agreement with its biggest Chinese rival

Before Trump-era sanctions made the company a non-player in the market, Huawei was briefly the world’s largest phone manufacturer, surpassing both Samsung and Apple in shipments. In a sign of how much it has fallen since then, Huawei announced this wee…