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- 🚫 Joe Biden Signs TikTok Ban Bill
🚫 Joe Biden Signs TikTok Ban Bill
The platform now has 9 months to divest or it will be banned
Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 President Biden signed a bill that could ban TikTok from operating within the U.S. Hong Kong’s financial regulator officially approved the first batch of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs for trading.
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Joe Biden signs TikTok “ban” bill into law
President Joe Biden signed a bill on Wednesday that could prompt a nationwide TikTok ban, intensifying the threat to the company's U.S. operations.
Congress approved the bill this week as part of a foreign aid package for Israel and Ukraine. This legislation poses the most significant risk to TikTok since U.S. concerns about the app emerged in 2020. TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has 270 days to sell TikTok under the new law, or face consequences such as being removed from U.S. app stores and internet hosting services.
Biden's signing of the bill sets a deadline for a sale by January 19, 2025, with a possible extension of 90 days if progress toward a sale is evident. TikTok plans to contest the law through legal means, with CEO Shou Chew expressing confidence in the company's stance and commitment to its users' rights.
Threads has 150 million monthly users
During Meta's first-quarter earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta's Threads app has surpassed 150 million monthly users, showing a growth of around 20 million users since February.
While the app's initial surge in popularity slowed down after its launch, it has been experiencing steady growth over the past six months. Zuckerberg sees Threads as a potential candidate to become Meta's next billion-user app.
Threads appears to be surpassing X in some aspects, with analytics suggesting it has more daily users in the United States. Notably, popular singer Taylor Swift recently joined Threads to promote her latest album. Unlike other Meta apps, Threads currently doesn't feature advertising, but this is likely to change as the app continues to expand its user base. Zuckerberg has indicated that the focus on monetization will come after the app achieves significant growth.
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Web3 Special
The co-founders of cryptocurrency mixer Samourai Wallet have been arrested by the United States Justice Department (DOJ) on charges of money laundering. CEO Keonne Rodriguez and CTO William Hill each face charges with potential sentences of up to 20 years and five years in prison, respectively.
Rodriguez was apprehended in Pennsylvania, while Hill was arrested in Portugal. The U.S. seeks Hill’s extradition. The DOJ, along with the IRS and FBI, executed the arrests and seized Samourai Wallet's servers and domain in Iceland. Additionally, a warrant was issued to halt downloads of their app, downloaded over 100,000 times.
The DOJ alleges Samourai Wallet conducted unlawful transactions totaling $2 billion, including facilitating over $100 million in money laundering from dark web markets. Their services, including Whirlpool and Ricochet, earned them $4.5 million in fees, creating unnecessary transactions to obscure crypto paths.
Hong Kong has given the green light for the launch of six spot crypto ETFs, slated to commence trading on April 30. These ETFs, comprising three for bitcoin and three for ether, are expected to draw attention due to their potential accessibility for investors.
Key players in this development include China Asset Management, Harvest Global, Bosera, and HashKey. Of these, China Asset Management stands out with a significant asset base of over $55 billion in mainland China and $3.6 billion in Hong Kong, managing nearly 100 ETFs across both regions.
While these ETFs may not match the scale of their U.S. counterparts, the approval underscores Hong Kong's ambition to position itself as a prominent digital assets hub. Unlike in the U.S., where cash-only ETFs dominate, Hong Kong's newly approved funds will adopt the "in-kind" model, which could streamline processes and potentially reduce costs for investors.
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