Vaughan Gething: The vet’s son and cricket fan who’s set to become Wales’s first minister

Published

1 year ago

March 16, 2024

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Vaughan Gething has been elected leader of Welsh Labour – and is set to become the next Welsh first minister and first black leader of any European country.

Currently serving as minister for the economy, Mr Gething, 50, has been in politics since he was a teenager.

But he rose to prominence as health minister throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when, he told Sky News years later, “you had to make really difficult, big calls and go out and front them up on a daily basis”.

Mr Gething described himself during the leadership race as “experienced, engaging and ambitious”.

Mr Gething was born in Zambia, where his father, a Welsh vet, met his mother, a Zambian chicken farmer.

He has spoken in the past about experiencing prejudice, and the impact it has had on him and his family.

In the 1970s, when he was two, his family moved to Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, where his father was due to start a new job – only to find the offer withdrawn when he arrived with a black family.

The family eventually relocated to Dorset, where he was brought up.

Set to become the nation’s first black first minister, he said: “Today we turn the page in the book of our nation’s history.

“A history that we write together.”

Early career

Mr Gething studied law at Aberystwyth University and then qualified as a solicitor at Cardiff University, having also served as the president of Wales’s National Union of Students.

His passion for politics began at a young age: he joined the Labour Party at 17 to help campaign in the 1992 elections.

Before being elected to the Senedd, he worked as a researcher to former Assembly Members Val Feld and Lorraine Barrett between 1999 and 2001.

Mr Gething became the youngest ever president of the Wales Trade Union Congress in 2008.

Elected to the Senedd

He was first elected to the Senedd in 2011 as the member for Cardiff South and Penarth.

Mr Gething joined the cabinet in 2013 as deputy minister for tackling poverty, the first black cabinet minister in any of the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

He was appointed deputy minister for health in 2014, before he took on the role of health minister in 2016.

He retained the role throughout the first year of the pandemic until he was made economy minister.

The government’s COVID response is currently the subject of an ongoing public inquiry.

This was the second time he ran to become leader of the Welsh Labour Party, having stood in 2018 against Mark Drakeford.

A ‘retired’ cricketer

He is a keen cricketer but now describes himself as “largely retired”.

While cricket is his main sporting passion, Mr Gething is also a fan of rugby and football.

But he says most of his time outside of parliament is spent with his wife and young son.

Politics

US regulator moves to drop appeal against Kalshi

Published

5 hours ago

May 7, 2025

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US regulator moves to drop appeal against Kalshi

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is seeking permission from the court to drop an appeal against prediction market Kalshi. The move could allow the platform to offer political event contracts to users without contest.

In a May 5 filing in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, lawyers for the CFTC filed an unopposed motion for voluntary dismissal, suggesting an agreement with Kalshi. The motion, subject to approval by the court, could end the CFTC’s appeal against a federal court ruling that the financial regulator could not bar Kalshi from listing political event contracts, i.e., bets on elections.

Law, Betting, CFTC, Court — *Motion to dismiss appeal filed by the CFTC on May 5. Source:* *Courtlistener*

Kalshi stipulated in a joint filing that the company would “bear its own costs, court fees and attorney fees incurred” if the court granted the CFTC’s motion to dismiss. The platform said that “election markets are here to stay” in a May 6 X post following the filing.

The betting platform initially filed a lawsuit against the CFTC in 2023 in response to the regulator ordering Kalshi to stop offering political event contracts. The company won in the lower court, prompting the appeal by the CFTC in September 2024.

Motion to drop the appeal after the change in administration?

The case was handled mainly before the US election and the appointment of acting CFTC chair Caroline Pham under President Donald Trump. CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger, nominated by former President Joe Biden, reportedly echoed Kalshi’s sentiment in February, claiming that election prediction markets were “here to stay.”

Launched in 2021, Kalshi became popular among many crypto users in part due to bets related to the 2024 US election. Though the CFTC argued in its appeal that betting on the elections could result in “spectacular manipulation” of markets and harm to the public interest, the regulator under Pham and Trump appeared to have reversed its position with the motion to dismiss.

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Politics

Bitwise throws NEAR ETF in race for SEC approval with S-1 filing

Published

7 hours ago

May 6, 2025

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Bitwise throws NEAR ETF in race for SEC approval with S-1 filing

Digital asset manager Bitwise has filed to list a spot Near exchange-traded fund with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, adding to a growing list of altcoins currently vying to win regulatory approval.

The Bitwise Near (NEAR) ETF will track the price movements of the NEAR token, minus expenses, through a traditional brokerage, Bitwise’s May 6 registration statement shows.

Bitwise named Coinbase Custody as the proposed custodian of the Bitwise NEAR ETF. The management fee, ticker and stock exchange it seeks to list on weren’t named yet.

Bitwise must also file a 19b-4 filing with the SEC to kickstart the regulator’s approval process for the fund. The crypto native asset manager indicated it would make such a filing when it registered a trust linked to the NEAR ETF in Delaware on April 28.

NEAR joins a pile of spot crypto ETFs on the SEC’s desk

The SEC now has at least a dozen spot crypto ETFs to review in 2025, including applications for Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Solana (SOL), XRP (XRP), Cardano (ADA), Hedera (HBAR), Polkadot (DOT), Chainlink (LINK), Avalanche (AVAX), Aptos (APT) and Sui (SUI).

Bitwise already has applications out for a spot DOGE, SOL, and XRP ETFs, and also has an approved spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETF, which are listed on the NYSE Arca and have attracted a combined $2.35 billion in net inflows since launching last year.

NEAR — the token powering the layer-1 Near blockchain — is the 44th largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $2.73 billion, CoinGecko data shows.

The Near blockchain was once touted as an Ethereum killer and is considered by its proponents as a solution to the “blockchain trilemma” — the challenge of achieving all three critical aspects of blockchain performance: security, scalability and decentralization.

Through Nightshade sharding, Near can process up to 100,000 transactions per second and is secured by 265 active validators, Nearblocks.io data shows.

The Near ecosystem shifted from decentralized finance to AI infrastructure in 2024, unveiling plans to build the world’s largest open-source large language model.

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Politics

New Hampshire governor signs crypto reserve bill into law

Published

8 hours ago

May 6, 2025

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New Hampshire governor signs crypto reserve bill into law

New Hampshire became the first US state to allow its government to invest in crypto currencies including Bitcoin (BTC), after Governor Kelly Ayotte signed a bill passed by the legislature into law.

In a May 6 notice, Ayotte announced on social media that New Hampshire would be permitted to “invest in cryptocurrency and precious metals” through a bill passed in the state Senate and House of Representatives. House Bill 302, introduced in New Hampshire in January, will allow the state’s treasury to use funds to invest in cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion, eliminating many tokens and memecoins.

“The Live Free or Die state is leading the way in forging the future of commerce and digital assets,” said New Hampshire Republicans in a May 6 X post.

Law, New Hampshire, United States, Bitcoin Reserve — *Signing New Hampshire’s crypto reserve bill into law on May 6. Source:* *Governor Kelly Ayotte*

With the signing of the bill into law, New Hampshire becomes the first of several US states considering passing legislation to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, including an initiative with the federal government. A similar bill in Arizona passed the state’s House in April but was vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs on May 2, and Florida’s government withdrew two crypto reserve bills from consideration on May 3.

New Hampshire’s crypto plans to precede the US government’s?

The efforts to create crypto reserves in different US states come as US President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers propose similar policies at the federal level. Trump signed an executive order in March to establish a “Digital Asset Stockpile” and a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.”

Senator Cynthia Lummis, who sponsored the Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide (BITCOIN) Act, proposed that the US government could hold more than 1 million BTC through civil and criminal forfeiture seizures. The bill is currently being considered by members of the US Senate Banking Committee.

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