‘Nothing has changed’: Sunak quashes speculation of May general election

Published

1 year ago

March 7, 2024

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Rishi Sunak has appeared to quash lingering speculation of a May general election – saying “nothing has changed” since he last indicated it will happen in the autumn.

The prime minister told reporters in January that his “working assumption” is that voters will go to the polls in “the second half of this year”.

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However, he did not rule out a May election categorically, prompting speculation he was keeping the option up his sleeve.

Some pundits argued Mr Sunak could go to the polls early if the spring budget on Wednesday contained enough giveaways – but the lack of radical measures cooled such talk.

Mr Sunak further poured cold water on suggestions of a May election on Thursday.

When asked about the date of the election by BBC Local Radio in Yorkshire, Mr Sunak said: “I was very clear about this at the beginning of the year about my working assumption for the election being in the second half of the year – nothing has changed since then.”

The prime minister also said the focus on the election date is from the Labour Party to “distract from the fact that actually they don’t want to talk about the substance”.

However, Labour’s national campaign manager Pat McFadden hit back: “Rishi Sunak should stop squatting in Downing Street and give the country what it desperately needs – a chance for change.

“The prime minister needs to finally come clean with the public and name the date of an election now.”

Technically, Mr Sunak can wait until December before calling an election, meaning voters would then cast their ballots in January 2025.

Sky News has spoken to pollsters about the factors he will be weighing up in making the decision.

With the Tory party 20 points behind in the polls, the prevailing assumption is that he will wait as long as possible to make up ground against Labour.

However there has been a lingering theory that he could go in May to avoid things getting worse – especially if there was a package of tax cuts in the spring budget that would make voters happy, or if the stalled Rwanda plan got off the ground.

The government has said it is focused on Rwanda flights taking off “in the spring.”

Meanwhile, in Wednesday’s budget, national income tax was cut by a further 2p, on top of the 2p already cut in the autumn statement. But some Tory MPs said this was not enough to win over voters looking elsewhere.

While the measure will save the average worker around £900, the overall tax burden is still set to rise by record levels because of freezes to tax thresholds.

Among the critics was the former home secretary, Suella Braverman, who told Sky News the budget “lacked something vivid to tell the British people we’re on their side”, saying that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt should have cut income tax.

She said that her party is in a “dire position” with some “very good MPs” likely to lose their seats.

Sunak ‘would be nuts’ to call election in May

Mr Hunt has left the door open for more pre-election giveaways, telling Times Radio “theoretically it would be possible ” to have another fiscal event if there is an election in autumn.

Speaking on his podcast Political Currency, former Tory chancellor George Osborne said if he was prime minister he would consider going to the polls as late as possible, in January 2025.

He said there are “a surprising number of Tory MPs” who think Downing Street is considering a May election “because they think things will only get worse”.

But he said in his opinion that “would be absolutely nuts”.

“You do not call a general election when you’re 26 points behind and you still have nine months left of your mandate to run,” Mr Osborne said.

“If I was Sunak, I wouldn’t be ruling out an election in January 2025. You want to give yourself maximum room for manoeuvre. “

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Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

Published

1 hour ago

April 4, 2025

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Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.

While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.

On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.

Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.

Tariffs compound existing mining challenges

Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.

Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.

According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.

“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.

He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.

“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.

Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.

BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”

Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.

“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.

Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.

“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.

As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.

Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.

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Malta regulator fines OKX crypto exchange $1.2M for past AML breaches

Published

2 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Malta regulator fines OKX crypto exchange .2M for past AML breaches

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.

Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.

While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.

OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.

The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

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US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global $428K for wash trading

Published

3 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global 8K for wash trading

Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.

A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.

In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.

CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.

CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI

The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.

CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.

In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.

CLS Global’s profile

According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”

Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.

The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.

US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global $428K for wash trading — *Source:* *CLS Global*

According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.

How much wash trading is in crypto?

Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.

According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.

Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.

In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.

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