The COVID inquiry reveals a uniquely toxic, destructive set of individuals trying to work through a crisis

Published

1 year ago

October 31, 2023

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There is a danger on days like today of focusing on dazzling but smaller-scale revelations that have come out of today’s evidence at the COVID inquiry hearings.

This includes the eye-opening WhatsApps appearing on the courtroom screens, the biblical language about the cabinet and prime minister, the misogynist comments about officials, a prime minister on holiday left undisturbed at a critical time as the virus spread and the failings of individual politicians and government departments.

We saw Dominic Cummings blocking – digitally prevent communications with – the prime minister on WhatsApp after a row over the influence and alleged briefings by Boris Johnson’s wife.

Each one a vital, depressing component of what we’ve learnt today.

But what really hits you, listening to six hours of testimony, is the overall quantum of the dysfunction we heard about; first from Lee Cain, Mr Johnson’s director of communications, and then from Dominic Cummings, his most senior adviser, over the period from January 2020 until end of the emergency phase of the pandemic.

Behind the door of Number 10, Mr Johnson and officials were handling the worst crisis Britain had faced since the Second World War.

COVID inquiry latest: ‘I was much ruder about men’ – Dominic Cummings denies misogyny

At the time, a lot of people cut them some slack, hoping and praying they would get things right.

Perhaps everyone should not have been so tolerant.

The sheer scale of the feuding, contempt and dysfunction we’ve heard about today beggars belief.

There was no pandemic plan in March 2020, just people lying about there being a pandemic plan. In Number 10, they were told on 16 March that the civil contingencies secretariat did not even have these plans centrally. That message, Mr Cummings said, was such a shock that people thought it was a spoof.

There was a core, wrong-headed belief at the beginning of the pandemic in Number 10, where people believed Britain could never be locked down until 10 days before it was, based on a dogged, widespread misreading of the nature of the British people.

And we heard how the prime minister’s most senior adviser, Mr Cummings, was trying to keep him away from pandemic planning meetings, fearing he would be a distraction. A simply incredible thing to admit.

But more than anything else, we hear in different ways through different bits of testimony how Britain at that point had an unfocused, indecisive prime minister who at one point looked willing to write off an entire older generation for the sake of the young.

Yes, at points he resisted the Whitehall health “blob”, asking questions and challenging assumptions in a way few others were prepared to do – but often to little effect, outmanoeuvred by those around him.

Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance wrote in one of his notebooks in August 2020 that Mr Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going”.

Quite bonkers set of exchanges. Another note from Sir Patrick in December 2020 said that the prime minister was suggesting that COVID “is just nature’s way of dealing with old people”.

Extraordinary remarks not least from a prime minister whose voting coalition depends on older voters at its core.

It should be no surprise that cabinet government in this country does not work effectively, or that 10 years into the Tories being in power, not every person around the top table is highly regarded by Tory colleagues.

Nor should it be a surprise that the structures in government to handle a pandemic were failing – secret exercises four years earlier in Whitehall ended in failure, and Brexit had distracted many for years.

The failings that led to the pandemic response have a long tail.

However, what we learnt from the COVID inquiry today was that layered on top of this was a uniquely toxic, destructive set of individuals trying to work their way through the crisis.

It was an environment where the prime minister’s right hand aide described himself as being in a “homicidal” mood at points, wanting to go back to Number 10 and fire people. At one point Mr Cummings launched four-letter diatribes about a senior official and said he wanted to “handcuff” her and remove her from the building.

Mr Cummings said during his testimony that during February he began to realise the pandemic plans Matt Hancock had told him existed did not actually exist.

This level of toxicity would make governing in normal times all but impossible. During a crisis it feels unforgivable.

Is what we’ve heard today enough to shame future politicians to ensure this never happens again?

Politics

Ukraine floats 23% tax on some crypto income, exemptions for stablecoins

Published

2 hours ago

April 10, 2025

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Ukraine floats 23% tax on some crypto income, exemptions for stablecoins

Ukraine’s financial regulator has proposed taxing certain crypto transactions as personal income at a rate of up to 23% but excluding crypto-to-crypto transactions and stablecoins.

Crypto transactions would be taxed at 18% with a 5% military levy on top as part of the proposed framework, released on April 8 by Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission.

NSSMC Chairman Ruslan Magomedov said in an April 8 statement that “the issue of crypto taxes is not a hypothesis, but a reality that is fast approaching.”

He added that the agency created the framework to help lawmakers make an “informed resolution” by considering each suggestion’s advantages and disadvantages because “these aspects can have a critical impact on the market and tax liability.”

Under the NSSMC’s proposed crypto framework, a tax will be applied when crypto is cashed out for fiat currency or exchanged for goods or services.

Crypto-to-crypto transactions wouldn’t be taxed, bringing Ukraine in line with other European countries, including Austria and France, as well as crypto-friendly jurisdictions like Singapore, the NSSMC said.

The regulator says it “makes sense” to exclude stablecoins backed by foreign currencies or only apply a 5% or 9% tax because Ukraine’s tax code already excludes income from transactions in “foreign exchange values.”

Mining, staking, hard forks and airdrops

Other crypto-related activities, such as mining, staking and airdrops, are also addressed in the framework which floated a few options for taxation.

The NSSMC said crypto mining is generally considered a business activity, but there might be a general tax-free limit for certain crypto transactions, including mining.

Under the framework, staking could be considered as “business captive income” or only taxed if the crypto is cashed out for fiat currencies. While hard forks and airdrops could be taxed either as ordinary income or when the tokens are cashed.

The regulator suggests a tax-free threshold could help “relieve the burden on small investors” and is common in other jurisdictions.

Exemptions for donations, transfers between family members, and holders who keep their crypto for a set amount of time are also flagged as possibilities. However, the NSSMC says the exemption might not apply to non-custodial crypto wallets.

Last December, Daniil Getmantsev, head of the tax committee of Ukraine’s parliament, said a draft bill to legalize cryptocurrencies was under review and expected to be finalized early this year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first signed a law establishing a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated crypto market in March 2022.

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Politics

21Shares files for spot Dogecoin ETF in the US

Published

4 hours ago

April 10, 2025

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21Shares files for spot Dogecoin ETF in the US

Digital asset manager 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund, following similar filings from rivals Bitwise and Grayscale.

The 21Shares Dogecoin ETF would seek to track the price of the memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), according to the firm’s April 9 Form S-1 registration statement. The Dogecoin Foundation’s corporate arm, House of Doge, plans to assist 21Shares with marketing the fund.

21Shares said Coinbase Custody would be the proposed custodian of its Dogecoin ETF but did not specify a fee, ticker or what stock exchange it would list on.

21Shares must also file a 19b-4 filing with the SEC to kickstart the regulator’s approval process for the fund.

DOGE currently has a $24.2 billion market cap and is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by value. It was created in 2013 as a joke and is a fork of Lucky Coin, which itself is a fork of Bitcoin.

21Shares’ proposed Dogecoin ETF is the company’s latest effort to expand its spot crypto ETF offerings, which currently includes only a spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fund.

The issuer also filed with the SEC in February to launch a spot Polkadot (DOT) ETF and last year, it filed to create a spot XRP (XRP) ETF.

The recent surge in crypto ETF filings reflects a “spaghetti cannon approach” from issuers testing which products the new SEC leadership might approve, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said in February.

“Issuers will try to launch many many different things and see what sticks,” Seyffart said.

Seyffart and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in February that there is a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot Dogecoin ETF this year, while the betting platform Polymarket currently gives approval odds of 64%.

21Shares and House of Doge partner for DOGE funds in Switzerland

21Shares also said on April 9 that it partnered with House of Doge to launch a fully backed Dogecoin exchange-traded product on Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange.

The 21Shares Dogecoin product will trade under the ticker “DOGE” with a 2.5% fee.

21Shares president Duncan Moir said that Dogecoin “has become more than a cryptocurrency: it represents a cultural and financial movement that continues to drive mainstream adoption, and DOGE offers investors a regulated avenue to be part of this exciting project.”

Magazine: Memecoin degeneracy is funding groundbreaking anti-aging research

Politics

US Senate confirms Paul Atkins to lead SEC under Trump

Published

4 hours ago

April 10, 2025

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US Senate confirms Paul Atkins to lead SEC under Trump

Update April 10 at 1:41am UTC: This article has been updated to include more background on Paul Atkins before becoming SEC chair.

The US Senate has confirmed US President Donald Trump’s nominee, Paul Atkins, as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a 51-45 vote largely along party lines.

Atkins’ confirmation on April 9 comes after Trump named the pro-crypto former Wall Street consultant to lead the agency late last year. Atkins also served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008, during the global financial crisis.

”A veteran of our Commission, we look forward to him joining with us, along with our dedicated staff, to fulfill our mission on behalf of the investing public,” the agency’s commissioners wrote in an April 9 statement.

Atkins founded financial consulting firm Patomak Global Partners in 2009, specializing in regulatory compliance and risk management, and served as co-chair of crypto advocacy group Token Alliance between 2017 and late 2024.

After he’s sworn in, Atkins will take over from Mark Uyeda, who has been the SEC’s acting chair since Jan. 20, after former chair Gary Gensler stepped down. Gensler’s tenure saw the SEC launch multiple lawsuits and investigations against crypto firms over alleged breaches of securities laws.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott expressed confidence that Atkins would continue the SEC’s crypto-friendly approach that it has taken under the Trump administration.

“Atkins will also provide regulatory clarity for digital assets, allowing American innovation to flourish, and ensuring we remain competitive on the global stage.”

Under Trump, the SEC created a Crypto Task Force to consult with the industry on regulation and dropped several crypto-related investigations and enforcement actions undertaken by the Gensler-led SEC.

Atkins is expected to take a different approach, telling a Senate confirmation hearing in March that a top priority of his at the SEC would be “to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent, and principled approach.”

Atkins’ confirmation delayed by disclosures

Atkins’ confirmation was reportedly delayed due to several financial disclosures he needed to file as a result of marrying into a billionaire family.

He married Sarah Humphreys Atkins in 1990 — whose family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC, a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes reported in December. The couple have a reported combined net worth of at least $327 million.

Some of those financial disclosures revealed that Atkins owned up to $6 million worth of crypto-related investments, including crypto custody platform Anchorage Digital and blockchain tokenization platform Securitize, Fortune reported last month.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered