Ulbricht’s pardon sparked widespread celebration and reignited discussions about Roger Ver, a controversial figure in the cryptocurrency world. Ver, an early Bitcoin Cash advocate, faces allegations of owing $48 million in taxes linked to his expatriation process. He denies the charges, claiming he relied on expert advice and was unfairly treated during legal proceedings.

Critics believe that his case represents a host of issues including violations of attorney-client privilege, concealing evidence, and more. His supporters call the situation a “miscarriage of justice.” Ray Youssef, an executive at a crypto platform, was one of the first known public crypto supporters to call for Ver’s release.

In response to the growing campaign, Musk said he would look into Ver’s case. He also drew attention to what supporters see as government overreach. They believe a pardon would uphold principles of privacy and due process, mirroring arguments made in Ulbricht’s defense.

This development has intensified debates on the balance between individual rights and state authority in the crypto space. Musk’s involvement adds weight to calls for clemency, fueling hopes for a resolution.

The current bull market has seen top alternative cryptocurrencies, except Ethereum, shine, and now, ETH holders are becoming frustrated. Market sentiment signals extreme negativity among the Ethereum community, and the crypto project’s slumping market cap growth is not helping matters.

Compared to other assets like Ripple (XRP) and Solana (SOL), whose market capitalizations have grown by 36.9% and 32.2% in the past month, ETH has been struggling and even recorded a 4.7% decline.

Factors Driving ETH Underperformance

A new report by the market intelligence platform Santiment analyzed factors driving Ethereum’s underperformance.

According to the analysis, the crypto community has been criticizing Buterin for periodically selling off large amounts of ETH. Although the Ethereum co-founder has explained severally that those sales were executed to fund personal expenses or support projects related to the blockchain, community members see them as a sign that he may not be confident in the network’s future.

On several occasions, Buterin’s ETH sales have triggered multi-week-long sell-offs among traders amid heightened concerns about Ethereum’s future and decentralization. Some market participants insist that Buterin, a few big players, and the Ethereum Foundation have too much control over the network because of their large ETH holdings.

These players include Coinbase, Binance, and Lido Finance, and their influence has raised centralization concerns among users. Additionally, users are worried about Ethereum following government rules in some cases, such as blocking transactions to the crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

A Good Sign?

From a more technological perspective, some analysts believe Ethereum’s underperformance could also be linked to its decision to go modular. Modularization in this context refers to Ethereum splitting its responsibilities across smaller, specialized projects called layer-2 solutions.

While going modular could have a positive impact on Ethereum in the long term, ETH is struggling currently because these layer-2 solutions are taking away some of the attention and investment that used to go to the cryptocurrency. One illustration of this issue is the ETH supply spiking significantly after the Dencun upgrade because transaction fees declined, and less ETH got burned.

Regardless of these factors, Santiment believes that the extremely negative social side of Ethereum is a good sign for the short-term future of ETH because the market often moves in the opposite direction from general investor sentiment. So, ETH could finally break past the $4,000 range in the coming weeks if retail traders remain bearish and sell off their coins to long-term holders and key stakeholders out of frustration.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has a new interim chairman: former Amazon executive Doug Gurr (pictured above).

The announcement comes as the U.K. seeks to position itself as a pro-growth, pro-tech nation by cutting red-tape and bureaucracy, with artificial intelligence (AI) taking center stage. The country is also nearing the end of a long investigation into the domestic cloud services market that had Amazon firmly in the CMA’s crosshairs.

In its announcement on Tuesday, the government leaned into Gurr’s past at Amazon as a means to “boost growth and support the economy,” noting that he will “bring a wealth of experience” from his work in the sector.

“This Government has a clear Plan for Change — to boost growth for businesses and communities across the U.K.,” Jonathan Reynolds, the U.K.’s secretary of state for business and trade, said in a statement. “As we’ve set out, we want to see regulators including the CMA supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth, putting more money in people’s pockets.”

The big tech factor

Gurr joined Amazon’s U.K division in 2011, initially as VP of its “hardlines” division, which focused on products such as gardening and toys. He transitioned into the role of country manager for Amazon’s China business in 2014, before moving back to head up U.K. operations in 2016. Gurr left Amazon in 2020 to become the director of the Natural History Museum.

Outgoing chair Marcus Bokkerink, who has more of a consulting than commercial background, held his post for less than three years, a relatively short tenure as the position typically lasts up to five years. However, reports indicate that chancellor Rachel Reeves was underwhelmed following a meeting with various U.K. regulators last week, prompting a changing of the guard.

It’s worth noting that although Gurr’s appointment is on an interim basis, the CMA’s CEO Sarah Cardell was also initially appointed as interim CEO back in 2022 before she moved into the role permanently.

That’s not to say this is what will happen with Gurr, but it gives a clear indication about the type of person the government wants to see chairing the country’s antitrust regulator — a body currently investigating big tech firms for all manner of alleged contraventions.

Alex Haffner, competition partner at law firm Fladgate, says it’s no coincidence that Gurr’s appointment has come at a time when the U.K. is “banging the drum for its growth agenda.” He also highlighted that Gurr’s background is “unashamedly commercial” compared to his predecessor.

Over and above that, however, this appointment raises questions about how the CMA might approach its enforcement of rules around big tech across verticals.

“What stakeholders will now be assessing is how the new appointment translates into the CMA’s approach to enforcement,” Haffner said in a statement to TechCrunch. “Recent signs are that it has taken heed of criticism of previous decisions and is perhaps more willing to be flexible — the recent Vodafone / Three clearance decision being a case in point. However, the new Chair also takes on the role at a time when the CMA has taken on significant new powers under the Digital Markets Competition and Consumer Act, particularly in relation to its oversight of big tech, meaning the CMA will likely become more activist, albeit giving considerable attention as to how to enforce in a way which best stimulates competition and therefore economic growth.”

The Open Cloud Coalition, a Google-backed lobby group launched back in October to curry favor with European lawmakers, “congratulated” Gurr on his appointment as interim chair. However, Nicky Stewart, senior advisor to the Open Cloud Coalition, urged the regulator not to lose sight of its ongoing investigation into the cloud services market, which counts Amazon as the runaway market leader.

“As the CMA’s cloud market investigation enters a critical phase, we urge the regulator to stay the course and take decisive action to create a fairer, more competitive cloud market that benefits businesses, consumers, and the wider digital economy,” Stewart said in a statement issued to TechCrunch. “The cloud industry can only flourish when there is a level playing field, and as outlined in our position paper, meaningful intervention is essential to unlocking innovation and investment across the sector.”

Hashprice, a metric coined by Luxor that gauges mining profitability, estimates the daily income of miners relative to their estimated contribution to the Bitcoin network’s hash power. In other words, it is the expected value miners can expect from 1 TH/s of hashing power per day.

According to Glassnode, hashprice is hovering above $62 PH/s, around the highest level since mid-December.

What’s driving the increase in hashprice? Well bitcoin (BTC) has surged to well over $100,000, a 56% increase in three months and has given the miners some relief. The network has also seen a slight increase in miner fees of late, roughly 12 BTC per day, the highest amount for over a month, partly driven by the network’s inscription activity.

Due to the halving in April 2024, where the mining rewards get cut in half, the hashprice had dropped from around $115 PH/s.

As a result of the halving, miners struggled in share price appreciation on average last year; while mining revenue for much of 2024 was below the rolling 365-simple moving average (SMA). Only since November has it reclaimed this moving average, which is a historically bullish signal.

While the hash rate, the computational power in order to mine on a proof-of-work blockchain, recently hit all-time highs, as a result sent the network difficulty to all-time highs, which eats into mining profitability, as it becomes harder for miners to receive rewards.

European head of research at Bitwise, Andre Dragosch, told CoinDesk exclusively about miners being in a healthier position than last year.

“We have recently seen a decline in network hash rate since the all-time highs in early January. Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin has increased, and the overall transaction count has picked up again. This has led to a recovery in hash price, which should technically incentivize miners to continue ramping up their hash rate”.

Dragosch says, “overall, bitcoin miners appear to be well capitalized judging by the continued increase in bitcoin miner holdings since the beginning of the year which implies that miners are selling less than they are mining on a daily basis”.

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

Even the anti-Donald Trump graffiti on the streets of West Hollywood is scarce and halfhearted now. Eight years ago, California was the “resistance” state. It is a different mood that a visitor encounters in 2025: resignation, boredom with the subject, a we-had-it-coming attitude among thoughtful Democrats and, at times, something approaching curiosity about the economic potential of America under a deregulating president.

A great liberal shrug is going on. It has been happening around the world since Trump clinched his win in November, and it is natural. You can’t be angry all the time. In the autocracies of 20th-century Europe, people of dissenting conscience often made what was known as an “inner migration”. That is, rather than flee or fight, they withdrew into private life as the political realm darkened around them. To detach like this is clever, not weak.

Just don’t overdo it, that’s all. I sense that liberals have allowed a healthy acceptance of electoral reality to cross into a hope that Trump’s second term won’t be so bad. Please.

Three things softened the impact of Trump last time. None of them applies now. First, he craved re-election. This made him willing to provoke the median voter to a certain point, but no farther. (The speed with which he disowned the faintly theocratic Project 2025 last summer showed how much this supposed hothead seeks to avoid needless unpopularity.) Unless something happens to the 22nd Amendment, Trump is now liberated from the innate discipline of electoral politics. Even the midterms mean little, as the race to succeed him will begin straight after. Second-term presidents have two years.

What else? His first administration was peopled with enough old-fashioned Republicans — Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson — to curb his excesses. He is now spoilt for officials and cabinet secretaries who are in the Maga mould. Tulsi Gabbard could be at the helm of US intelligence soon. There is nothing Stoic or urbane in brushing that off.

Above all, the world in 2017 was stable enough to absorb a certain amount of chaos. Inflation was low and Europe at peace. The last major pandemic in the west was a century in the past. It is into much frailer webbing that Trump will hurl his tariffs and foreign escapades this time.

We could go on in this vein, citing practical and contingent reasons to worry. We could mention the federal judiciary, which is more Trump-tinged now than it was when he first took office. Will it constrain him? We could also mention that he will be 82 when he stands down. Last time, he had to think about the legal exposure, earning potential and social reputation he would have in his post-presidential life. Will that be such a factor now?

In the end, however, my argument — and a lot of political commentary — comes down to instinct. There is a hubris in Maga-world right now that just wasn’t there in 2017, in part because Trump hadn’t won the popular vote. Talk of much higher economic growth, territorial conquest, putting a US flag on Mars: if this doesn’t reek to you of pride before a fall, of imminent over-reach, then we just have different antennas. (And I hope mine is wrong.) In all democracies, a party is never more dangerous than when high on fresh electoral success. The difference with the US is the size of the stakes for the outside world. Think of George W Bush after his historically good midterms in 2002, or Lyndon Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam after 1964, when his vote pile could be seen from space.

Yes, a war of choice is improbable under Trump. (Though events can push leaders into uncharacteristic actions. Remember, the perception of Bush before September 11 was that he was a do-nothing isolationist.) More likely, a tariff spree will set off an uncontrollable world response, or the economy will be run too hot, or the constitution will creak to breaking point as Trump seeks to reward friends and hound enemies. At the least, there will be internal recriminations when it becomes clear that public debt, urban squalor and America’s other issues aren’t amenable to a techno-libertarian fix.

Whatever the precise form of the coming chaos, the relative lack of worry about it is what stands out from eight years ago. The liberal line in 2025 seems to go something like this: we overdid the panic about Trump last time, so let’s not repeat the mistake. Neither half of this proposition survives the slightest intellectual audit. The panic was borne out, unless the two impeachments — one for seeking to overturn an election result — somehow don’t count. Also, even if the first term wasn’t so bad, why assume the second will be just the same? Trump and his movement are much more serious entities now. His inaugural speech this week was formidable in vision and expression.

None of this means that people who dislike Trump should take the man’s advice to “fight, fight, fight”. Protest and activism have been dead-ends for the Democrats. But if smugness was bad, so is cringing self-doubt. The lesson of the 2024 election for liberals was, or should have been, narrow: stop choosing useless candidates. This has somehow grown into a broader crisis of confidence about whether their underlying assessment of Trump as a menace was ever right. Being vindicated over the coming years is going to be no fun at all.

janan.ganesh@ft.com

• Sega has launched a new Sega Account service
• It’s free to sign up and offers exclusive in-game rewards
• This includes a bonus outfit for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Sega has just launched a brand new online account system, simply called ‘Sega Account’.

The official Sega Account website reveals that its “lets you maximize Sega’s online services” and that it “offers a ton of benefits.” Much like Sega’s email newsletter system, Sega Account is free to sign up for and seems like it’ll offer exclusive in-game rewards for those who do.