Molly White's Citation Needed - Issue 100 – Freedom of all kinds is worth fighting for

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

As masked agents execute people and terrorize communities, crypto executives who spent years posting about freedom fall conspicuously silent — except when writing checks for the politicians enabling it. Originally published on January 29, 2026.

I'm Molly White, and you're listening to the audio feed for the Citation Needed Newsletter. You can see the text version of the newsletter online at citation needed. news. This is Citation Needed's 103-cap issue and issue 196 overall. This newsletter is free because I want it to be accessible to everyone, but it's also my full-time job. Producing it means paying real costs, from web hosting to pacer fees, and spending substantial time on research, writing and maintaining related projects like Web3 is going just great and follow the crypto. To celebrate the milestone, I'm running a membership drive with a goal of 50 new paid subscribers by Issue 200. Please consider joining today and helping me reach it. You can sign up for a subscription

at citation needed.news slash sign up. Issue 100, freedom of all kinds is worth fighting for. As masked agents execute people and terrorize communities, crypto executives who spent years posting about freedom fall conspicuously silent, except when writing checks for the politicians enabling it. This issue was originally published on January 29, 26. Once again, it feels profoundly weird to sit here and write about cryptocurrency as the United States is faced with escalating state-sponsored violence, and terror. This time it's masked ice agents terrorizing communities, executing people in the

streets like Silvio Villegas Gonzalez, Renee Good, Keith Porter, and Alex Preti. They're killing people in detention centers, people like Geraldo Luna's Campos choked to death by a guard, or dozens more through denial of medical care or under suspicious circumstances. They're terrorizing whole communities, forcing people to decide whether it's safe to go to work or to send their kids to school. They're kidnapping kids and they're threatening protesters, saying they'll enter their information into a, quote, nice little database to classify them as domestic terrorists, following them home and threatening to, quote, erase them. But it is also in no small part thanks to the cryptocurrency industry and the rest of the technologarchs

that we find ourselves with this administration, and with, with members of Congress who either wholeheartedly support its abuses or are too craven to do anything meaningful to stop them. For years, crypto executives have touted cryptocurrency's supposed anti-authoritarian and humanitarian credentials, whether to fend off regulators or convince the public that crypto has viable use cases beyond speculation. The technology is necessary and good, they claim, because it could support dissidents living under authoritarian regimes, help persecuted groups escape their oppressors, shield people from surveillance, or somehow inherently protect citizens from government overreach. Many of them spent years posting piously about the importance of due process and protection

from abuses of power, or shared quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass about freedom. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in May 2025, we will hold governments accountable if we see bad activity to protect your rights. Cracken founder and chairman Jesse Powell wrote in February 2022, I stand for human rights and believe that evil prevails when good men do nothing. In June 2020, Gemini co-founder and President Tyler Winklevoss wrote, It's also hard to believe how some people want to make justice a political issue. It's a human rights and dignity issue.

In December 2024, Andreessen Horowitz, General Partner Mark, Mark Andresen wrote, It's interesting to see who is standing up in favor of unlimited, unaccountable, unconstitutional power wielded by unelected bureaucrats and rogue politicians. And in May 2025, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote, Freedom of all kinds is worth fighting for, economic, speech, due process, etc. And yet now these voices are silent on the authoritarianism unfolding before us. Where are their defenses with the Constitution, when the president claims Pretti's lawful gun ownership justified his killing, or when ICE leaders tell subordinates to enter homes without warrants?

Where are their warnings about surveillance states, now that ICE is photographing protesters for their domestic terrorist lists, and Palantir is contracted by the government to build databases of people living in the U.S. they can target for raids. In 2022, they were incensed when Canadian authorities froze bank accounts belonging to truckers protesting vaccine mandates, and delighted for the opportunity to promote crypto as an alternative funding mechanism. But now when ICE agents murder bystanders and invent pretexts that footage shows are false, where is the righteous outcry against state violence towards those exercising their right to protest? The answer, of course, is that they never actually cared about these principles at all. who believed they did was dangerously naive. These were marketing slogans and talking points, deployed when convenient to ward off regulation and burnish crypto's reputation, discarded the moment they might conflict with business interests. The atrocities of Trump's regime have clearly done nothing to lose crypto's support. Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz

have each contributed another roughly $25 million apiece to the political machine that installed Trump and bought Congress. Gemini's Winklevoss twins and Cracken have contributed at least $22 million and $2 million, respectively, to new pro-crypto super PACs and dark money groups that are even more explicitly Trump aligned. Many of these executives have long made it clear that authoritarianism isn't just collateral damage in their pursuit of business boosting deregulation, but a desirable outcome. Mark Andreessen, an outspoken Trump supporter, advisor, and recruiter, published a 2023 manifesto on, quote, techno-optimism that explicitly cited as one of its patron saints, Felipe Tomaso Marnetti, co-author of the fascist manifesto that formed the platform for Mussolini.

Coinbase and Andresen Horowitz alum, Balagis Srinivasa, has promulgated the idea of the network state, an autocratic proposal to create tech-governed city states free from democratic oversight. current Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Antreason, and the Winklevoss twins have all expressed support for the concept, and the Winklevosses have even funded a proposed network state called Praxis, whose CEO rather overtly embraces fascism. In-crime. Something funky has been happening with the U.S. Marshall's pile of seized crypto, the crypto they're tasked with hanging onto as cases wind through the courts.

In March 2024, almost 25 million, was inexplicably removed from a Marshall's controlled wallet containing funds connected to the 2016 BitFinex hack. In October 2024, crypto sleuths Zach XPT noted that $20 million of the Marshall's crypto assets had apparently been stolen, with the thief laundering the funds through various exchanges. The next day, $19.3 million of those funds were mysteriously returned. Now Zach XPT has linked the stolen government funds, as well as stolen assets. belonging to other victims, to a man named John DeGita. According to Zach XPT, Digita was previously known only as Lick online and was active in

telegram chat rooms where crypto thieves boasted about their wealth. When another thief taunted Lick for, quote, only having $6 million, Lick evidently decided the only way to defend his honor was to go on a screen share call to show proof of ownership by transferring funds between wallets. In doing so, he exposed several wallet addresses, and Zach XPT was able to trace some of the crypto back to the U.S. government wallet addresses. Shockingly, Daggeta's father is reportedly Dean Daggeta, the owner of an IT company called Command Services and Support, or CMDSS. In November 2024, CMDSS began a contract with the U.S. Marshals to provide management services for their seized crypto assets. The contract is still active.

While Coinbase has since July 24 managed with the Marshalls call their Class 1 crypto assets, the most popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether, CMDSS was chosen to manage the Class 2 through Class 4 cryptocurrencies. While it could be that the younger Daggeta gained privileged information or access to the Marshall's crypto wallets through his father, it's not clear how that would have enabled thefts in the months prior to the contract award. I'm hopeful that a FOIA request I filed with the marshals earlier this week will shed some light on that. It's also curious that many of the assets licks siphoned from government wallets fall into the class one category,

which CMDSS is not involved in managing. The marshals have declined to comment on the matter, citing ongoing investigations. The incident has renewed concerns about the U.S. government's ability to prudently manage crypto. In 2022, a Department of Justice Inspector General report, quote, challenges in the Marshall's crypto custody practices, including, quote, lack of comprehensive inventory management and, quote, inadequate, incomplete, and conflicting policies and procedures. Last year, the Marshalls struggled to publish even an estimate of how much crypto they held.

An IT contractor who was passed over for a contract with the Marshall's explained to CoinDesk, quote, as far as I'm aware, the USMS is currently managing this with individual keystrokes in an Excel spreadsheet. their one bad day away from a billion-dollar mistake. Later in 2024, the Marshalls disclosed in response to a FOIA request that they held around 28,98 Bitcoin, priced at more than $2.5 billion at today's prices, though they did not provide an accounting of their other tokens.

After Zach XPT's allegations, a wallet linked to the thefts launched a John Daggeta token, with the ticker, Lick, on the Pump Fund meme coin launchpad. I couldn't help but laugh when I read Rebtsbts, reporting from Coin Telegraph that, quote, the deployer of LIC held 40% of the total supply at launch, according to blockchain data visualization platform bubble maps, a level of concentration often viewed as a red flag in early stage token launches. I'm not sure the degree of concentration is really the primary red flag here.

In Regulators Both the SEC and the CFTC are showing signs of anxiety that the current pro-crypto regulatory capture could quickly evaporate. The two agencies have repeatedly emphasized, quote, future-proofing their deregulatory efforts, making them resilient against future regulators who might seek to reverse their changes. Newly appointed CFTC Chairman Michael Selig published a whole op-ed in the Washington Post, which waxes poetic about a coming, quote, golden age for American financial markets thanks to President Trump. The op-ed also announces his, quote, future-proof initiative, which he characterized on Twitter as a strategy to, quote,

future-proof the CFTC against rogue regulators. Throughout the op-ed and his Twitter thread, he makes it clear that by rogue regulators, he means those who seek to enforce long-standing financial regulations against crypto firms. In the Biden administration, he writes, regulators, quote, subjected novel products such as digital assets and perpetual futures to legacy rules,

something he hopes to avoid ever happening again by, quote, codifying policy through notice and comment rulemaking. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has made similar comments, telling attendees at a December blockchain association policy summit that, quote, what is really important to me is that we future-proof what we're doing. Whatever happens down the road, we don't have the pendulum swinging the other way and then having a lot of our efforts washed away. Atkins has pushed Congress to write new laws, such as the current market structure bill, codifying crypto-friendly policy to avoid the, quote, risk that a future commission could reverse course.

SEC. The SEC has dismissed with prejudice its case against the Winklevoss twins' Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Filed in January 2023, the agency alleged that the company had violated securities laws with its earn program, in which Gemini partnered with the Genesis crypto lender to offer Gemini customers up to 7.4% APY on assets they loaned through Genesis. When Genesis suffered major losses on loans to Three Arrow's Capital and Babble Finance, the company went under, and around $900 million in Gemini customers' assets were suddenly locked up in bankruptcy proceedings. Now, the SEC has evidently decided no harm, no foul, stating, quote,

in light of the 100% in-kind return of Gemini earned investors' crypto assets through the Genesis bankruptcy and the settlements noted above, and in the exercise of its discretion, the commission believes the dismissal of the claims against defendant is appropriate. While, but we gave the money back, isn't normally a successful defense, just ask San Bankin-Fried, contributing around $4.4 million to Trump's campaign, donating an undisclosed amount to Trump's ballroom project, spending $1 million to be among the first members of the Trump family-run executive branch club, investing in Donald Trump Jr's American Bitcoin venture, and committing $22 million to political projects backing pro-Trump crypto advocates in the midterms

seems to have gone a long way. The SEC case was paused back in April, and as I wrote then, quote, it's widely understood that these pauses mark the end of SEC scrutiny for these companies. Two months later, as the Winklevas twins stood behind Trump in the Oval Office as he signed the Genius Act stablecoin bill, Trump remarked about the crypto industry, quote, I got you guys out of so much trouble. Thanking the Winklevases specifically, he added, quote, they've got plenty of cash and it's great that you're on our side.

The dismissal of the Gemini Earned enforcement action adds to a long list of crypto-focused cases and investigations that the SEC has paused, dismissed, or otherwise ended. That list also includes Ave, Binance, Coinbase, Consensus, Crypto.com, Cumberland DRW, Dragon Chain, Gemini, a separate investigation, Hex, Immutable, Cracken, Ando Finance, OpenCe, PayPal, ripple, Robin Hood, Tron, Uniswap, Yuga Labs, and the ZECash Foundation. The SEC has also issued more guidance around tokenized securities. It echoes past less formal statements from agency commissioners,

such as Hester Pierce's July 2025, statement that, quote, tokenized securities are still securities. In the new statement, they reiterate that, quote, the format in which a security is issued or the methods by which holders are recorded, e.g. on-chain versus off-chain does not affect application of the federal securities laws. The guidance draws several important distinctions. First, between issuer-sponsored tokenized securities, on-chain stocks issued or otherwise authorized by the underlying company, and third-party sponsored tokenized security. on-chain stocks unaffiliated with the underlying company. For third-party tokens, the SEC further distinguishes between two types,

custodial versions, where each token represents an indirect interest in an underlying share held by the issuer, and synthetic versions, which the SEC warns are, quote, not an obligation of the issuer of the reference security and confer no rights or benefits from the issuer of the reference security. This synthetic category is particularly problematic, as illustrated by Robin Hood's July offering of so-called OpenAI tokens, which they said represent shares in the private company. OpenAI quickly warned that, quote, these OpenAI tokens are not OpenAI equity. We did not partner with Robin Hood, were not involved in this, and do not endorse it. Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires her approval.

We did not approve any transfer. Please be careful. This guidance comes as the New York Stock Exchange has announced it plans to develop a platform for tokenized stock trading. While the announcement was met with excitement from the crypto world, Columbia professor Omid Malikhan warned that the announcement, quote, reads like vaporware and yet another corporate fantasy masquerading as innovation. He points out that the announcement lacks even the most basic details, and that they caveat the whole plan as, quote, subject to regulatory approvals. This would certainly not be the first time a major firm announced plans to blockchainify some portion of their business

and then either never followed through or quietly shut it down later on. As David Gerard wrote in Attack of the 50-foot blockchain, quote, Cryptomedia outlets write articles about things that have not happened yet and probably won't. Talking about becomes considering doing, becomes will-do, becomes is-doing. Even if a given blockchain trial does in fact happen, later failure is not documented. CFTC The CFTC Office of the Inspector General has published its annual report identifying, quote, management and performance challenges. After getting over my initial shock that there were any inspectors general left in the U.S. government,

I was interested to see that the pending crypto market structure bill is listed as challenge number one. The OIG writes, quote, anticipated passage of legislation expanding CFTC jurisdiction and authority related to cryptocurrency and other digital assets. may present a significant management challenge. CFTC may be required to implement new registrant categories, complete necessary rulemakings, and implement mandated cooperative regulatory efforts. Challenges include obtaining additional qualified staff, developing institutional knowledge and expertise,

launching and maintaining necessary additional data systems and analytics, and management of additional budgetary resources. The recommendation to hire additional qualified staff seems unlikely to materialize, given that the same report notes that the CFTC reduced its workforce by 22% in the prior year. And at his confirmation hearing, CFTC Chair Selig repeatedly dodged questions from lawmakers, pressing him to acknowledge that the CFTC needs more staff and resources to take on oversight of crypto and prediction markets. This chronic understaffing is, of course, precisely why the crypto industry has fought so hard to make the CFTC their price

regulatory, rather than the better-resourced SEC. Their banking on the agency lacking the capacity to meaningfully enforce whatever rules are put in place. OCC. The Office of the Comptroller of the currency has responded to Senator Warren's request that they delay the review of the Trump family's World Liberty Financial Crypto Companies' application for a bank charter, quote, until President Trump divests from WLF and eliminates all financial conflicts of interest involving himself or his family and the company. Comptroller of the currency

Jonathan Gould, a former blockchain executive nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate last July, wrote, quote, Congress has made clear that the OCC has a duty to act on the applications it receives in a timely manner. The OCC intends to act consistent with this duty rather than your demand. After decades of decline in the number of de novo charters, it is vital the OCC returned to normal order. This means adhering to the law and reviewing all applications, including applications to establish national banks, in an apolitical, non-partisan, and objective manner, supporting both innovative and traditional approaches to the very old business of banking. In Congress, the Senate Agriculture Committee quickly voted to advance its version of

crypto-market structure legislation to the full Senate. The vote split along party lines, with all 12 Republicans voting in support and 11 Democrats voting against. While all committee Democrats ultimately voted against advancing the bill, pro-Crypto Democrats Adam Schiff from California and Corey Booker from New Jersey, both spoke positively of crypto, with Booker gushing about, quote, extraordinary humanity-changing breakthroughs that could give Americans a financial system that is faster, cheaper, and more inclusive. No amendments from Democrats were approved,

including ones that would have prohibited elected officials and their family members from profiting from crypto, that would require the CFTC to appoint at least four commissioners, or that would prohibit bailouts of digital asset issuers. The insistence by Republican Ag Committee members on advancing the bill without Democratic support could be a hurdle in the full Senate, where it will require at least seven Democrats to vote in support. This is a separate bill from the one under consideration in the Senate Banking Committee, where a markup hearing was canceled earlier this month following Coinbase intervention. That has still not been rescheduled and is likely to be delayed further as that committee follows Trump's call to pivot to focus on housing affordability issues.

The House Oversight Democrats have released a staff report titled Professionalized Corruption, how Donald Trump is abusing power and accepting digital kickbacks from foreign and criminal interests to cash in on the presidency like never before. The 30-page report explains how Trump has used cryptocurrency to enrich himself to the tune of at least $2.25 billion, or as much as $9.7 billion when including paper wealth from his Trump meme coin and other ventures. It also cites my writing on the Trump family's USD1 stable coin and the mechanism by which he profits from it. Along with a written report, they've also published a web page with a Web3 is Going Great style Trump family digital grift counter. In the White House, ProPublica's reporting on Todd Blanche's crypto-conflicts of interest has triggered a letter from six senators, who write, quote, Your actions may be a violation of 18 U.S.C. 208A. At the very least, you had a glaring conflict of interest and should have recused yourself. The legal watchdog, campaign legal center, has separately cited ProPublica's reporting in a complaint requesting an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General. In elections and political influence. Although most of the pro-crypto super PACs are waiting until the January 31st filing deadline to disclose their 2025 fundraising details,

Fershake is previewing its disclosure with the press blitz, publicizing their $193 million war chest for the midterms. That they can brandish this figure right around when senators are deciding how to vote on crypto market structure legislation is, from their perspective, fortune. timing. While most other pro-crypto super PACs have yet to submit their disclosures, public statements from the Fellowship PAC, Digital Freedom Fund, and other new crypto super PACs put the industry's midterm fundraising total at a minimum of $315 million. To put that in perspective, in 2024, the crypto industry's $133 million in spending surpassed traditional lobbying juggernauts like Big Oil and Big Pharma, making it one of the largest corporate political forces in America. Now they've amassed more than double that. The crypto industry's so-called educational nonprofit, the American Innovation Project, has launched

a program to fund congressional staff positions for members on the House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees. Committee is responsible for crypto oversight. After they go through weeks of so-called training on quote emerging technologies like crypto, AI, biotech, and defense tech, The program will target young, impressionable, er, I mean, eager to learn, college graduates. Outside the U.S., the United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority has banned Coinbase's August 2025 ad campaign. The campaign included a musical theater-style video portraying the U.K. as destroyed by inflation, strikes, and unemployment, ending with a text, quote, if everything's fine, don't change anything, alongside the Coinbase logo. Print ads placed in subway and train stations echoed this messaging, with headlines like, quote, homeownership out of reach, real wages stuck in 2008, and eggs now out of budget.

The ASA determined the ads risk, quote, presenting complex, high-risk financial products as an easy or obvious response to serious financial concerns while downplaying crypto's risks. The Web 3 is going just great recap. There were four entries between January 17 and 29. $23.83 million was added to the Grift counter. Aperture finance users lost at least $3.4 million. $13.43 million were stolen from macha meta users in a swap net exploit. The thief of millions of dollars in C's U.S. controlled crypto was alleged to be a government crypto contractor's son, and Saga halted their blockchain after a $7 million theft.

Worth a read. ProPublica has another great crypto investigation, this time looking into how fugitive Roger Veer secured such a remarkably lenient outcome on his $50 million tax evasion case. The piece outlines how Veer explored every avenue for leniency, eventually finding one of the so-called friends of Trump who could lobby the administration on his behalf and secure meetings that would exclude prosecutors knowledgeable about his case. Quote, it stinks to high heaven, said a current DOJ official. That's titled How Bitcoin Jesus avoided prison thanks to one of the friends of Trump. The New York Times editorial board has published a surprisingly critical accounting of how Trump

has used crypto and other business deals to enrich himself from the office of the presidency. The piece starts out by disclaiming that, quote, we know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view, and they continue to grow. The article puts Trump's crypto-derivism. profits at only $867 million, substantially lower than the House Oversight Committee Democrats' recent estimate of $2.25 billion. But it's still refreshing to see the Times right that, quote, Mr. Trump hollows out the institutions of government for personal gain. That's titled,

How Trump has pocketed $1,408,500,000. In the News, I'm featured in an episode of the Lever's new What Tech Wants podcast series, along with the inimitable Jacob Silverman. We talked about the crypto industry's political spending, what they hoped that money would buy them, how that project is going, and what it could mean for everyday people. That episode is titled

What Tech Wants, Crypto Rain of Terror. I also joined Dan Abrams on his podcast to discuss Trump's crypto self-enrichment. We also talk about how the Trump's son's portrayal of crypto is deeply misleading, and talk about what could come of all this, both in the best and worst-case scenarios. That episode is titled The Dan Abrams podcast with Molly White.

That's all for now, folks. Until next time, this has been Molly White. Thanks for listening to this issue of the citation-needed newsletter. If you would like to support my work with a free or pay-what-you-want subscription to the citation-needed newsletter, or if you would like to receive these issues in your email, go to citation-needed. dot news slash sign up. If you enjoyed the podcast version of this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review in your podcast player of choice.