Bitfinex was and still is a popular cryptocurrency exchange that had 119,754 Bitcoin (worth over A$7b now) stolen from it in 2016. Today the US DoJ arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan (an awful rapper by the name of Razzlekhan) who "allegedly conspired to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen from Bitfinex's platform". The FBI managed to trace the original 2016 exfiltration of Bitcoin from Bitfinix to Ilya Lichtenstein and over the last 5 years, 25,000 of those Bitcoin were "transferred out of Lichtenstein's wallet via a complicated money laundering process that ended with some of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan". The DOJ's press release has a paragraph explaining how the laundering took place.
Apple is blessing us with the ability to accept payments via the NFC chip in an iPhone. The feature is called Tap to Pay. Apps integrate the Tap and Pay SDK to read the NFC chip on a credit card (or mobile wallet on another smartphone/watch) and take money off the card to pay for something. Essentially a payment terminal via an app. Those Bluetooth or Lightning connected card readers like from PayPal and Square will be a thing of the past. Stripe is onboard now with their Terminal app launching in "spring" (end of May) and I assume practically every payment processor will release an app to take advantage of the new SDK, so it'll get a wide release eventually, but Tap to Pay is US-only for now.
Nvidia's deal to buy Arm off SoftBank is officially dead. The US$40b deal announced in September 2020 hit hurdle after hurdle with governments globally - "European Union regulators ended up opening an investigation into the acquisition, Chinese regulators have held off on approving the deal, and US regulators moved to outright block it". They are concerned about "NVIDIA gaining an unfair advantage over other companies who use Arm's IP, both by controlling the direction of its development and by their position affording NVIDIA unique access to insights about what products Arm customers were developing". The plan now is for SoftBank to put Arm back on a stock exchange, probably the Nasdaq, not the LSE it used to trade on prior to SoftBank's acquisition.
Heads up for owners of laptops with Thunderbolt 4 - CalDigit has a new dock. The TS4 sells for US$360 (so probably a $549 RRP in AUS), but it packs more ports than ever before. You get a 2.5gbit ethernet port, SD and microSD card readers, a 3.5mm audio hack, 98W USB-C PD charging, DisplayPort 1.4, 7x 10gbit USB ports (3x USB-C, 4x USB-A, each capable of 7.5W output) and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. I can see this unit being popular with an M1 MacBook Pro plus a nice 3440x1440 widescreen display. Hooks up with a single USB-C cable so when you want to move away from your desk just yank out one cable. Should go on sale here in Australia late-March/early-April. Day 1 Sizzle subscriber Derek at Try and Byte will sort ya out.
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