Lucy Connolly: Wife of former Tory councillor loses appeal against sentence for racial hatred post

Published

1 day ago

May 20, 2025

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The wife of a former Conservative councillor has lost an appeal against her 31-month prison sentence for an online rant about migrants on the day of the Southport attacks.

The judgment handed down by Lord Justice Holroyd at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday said there was “no arguable basis” that Lucy Connolly’s original sentence was “manifestly excessive”.

“The application for leave to appeal against sentence therefore fails and is refused,” it said.

Connolly, whose husband Raymond Connolly was a Tory West Northamptonshire councillor until he lost his seat in May, was arrested on 6 August 2024 after calling for “mass deportation now” in an X post on 29 July, which also said hotels housing asylum seekers should be set on fire.

“If that makes me racist so be it,” she wrote.

The post was viewed 310,000 times in the three-and-a-half hours before Connolly deleted it.

She was sentenced to 31 months in prison at Birmingham Crown Court last October, after pleading guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred. She was ordered to serve 40% of the sentence in prison before being released on licence.

Connolly shared her X post on the same day three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last year.

False information claiming the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker spread online, leading to riots and unrest in multiple locations across the UK.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 52 years in January after pleading guilty to murdering Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar in Southport that day.

Connolly, from Northampton, later apologised for acting on “false and malicious” information.

Reacting to the appeal decision, her husband described it as “shocking and unfair”, adding that Connolly is a “good person and not a racist”.

Southport murders resurfaced anxiety over son’s death

Connolly last week told judges she was “really angry, really upset” and “distressed that those children had died” when she shared her X post.

She said via videolink from prison that her own son died tragically around 14 years ago and that news of the children’s murders in Southport had caused a resurgence of grief-related anxiety.

“Those parents still have to live a life of grief,” she said. “It sends me into a state of anxiety and I worry about my children.”

Connolly also told the judges that, despite conversations with her legal team, she had not understood that by pleading guilty she was accepting that she intended to incite violence.

When asked if she intended for anybody to set asylum hotels on fire, Connolly said: “Absolutely not.”

Defendant ‘took care of children of African heritage’

But in his judgment on Tuesday, Lord Justice Holroyd said that the principal ground of Connolly’s appeal was “substantially based on a version of events put forward by [her]”, which he and his colleagues Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Sheldon have “rejected”.

In a statement released shortly after the judgment on Tuesday, Mr Connolly insisted that his wife is “not a racist”.

“As a childminder she took care of small children of African and Asian heritage; they loved Lucy as she loved them,” he said.

“My wife has paid a very high price for making a mistake and today the court has shown her no mercy. Lucy got more time in jail for one tweet than some paedophiles and domestic abusers get.”

He said he believes the “system wanted to make an example” of his wife to ensure they were “scared to say things about immigration”.

“This is not the British way,” he said.

He added: “The 284 days of separation have been very hard, particularly on our 12-year-old girl.

“Lucy posted one nasty tweet when she was upset and angry about three little girls who were brutally murdered in Southport. She realised the tweet was wrong and deleted it within four hours. That did not mean Lucy was a ‘far right thug’ as Prime Minister Keir Starmer claimed.”

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Politics

Bitcoin Suisse eyes UAE expansion with regulatory nod in Abu Dhabi

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3 hours ago

May 21, 2025

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Bitcoin Suisse eyes UAE expansion with regulatory nod in Abu Dhabi

Bitcoin Suisse secured an in-principle approval (IPA) from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), marking a major step in the Swiss crypto firm’s expansion beyond the European Union.

The Swiss crypto financial service provider received the in-principle approval through its subsidiary BTCS (Middle East), according to a May 21 news release.

The IPA is a precursor to a full financial services license, which would allow Bitcoin Suisse to provide regulated crypto financial services such as digital asset trading, crypto securities and derivatives offerings, as well as custody solutions.

The approval reflects the firm’s “strong commitment to maintaining the highest standards of transparency, security, and regulatory compliance,” according to Ceyda Majcen, head of global expansion and designated senior executive officer of BTCS (Middle East).

“Abu Dhabi, one of the Middle East’s fastest-growing financial centers, presents a compelling opportunity for growth. We look forward to working closely with the FSRA to obtain our full license,” Majcen wrote in a May 21 X announcement.

This marks Bitcoin Suisse’s first expansion outside of the European Union.

Founded in 2013, Bitcoin Suisse played a significant role in developing the country’s crypto ecosystem and has been a key contributor to Switzerland’s Crypto Valley, a Switzerland-based blockchain ecosystem valued at more than $500 billion.

Crypto firms bet on Middle East as next global crypto hub

Increasingly more crypto firms are expanding into the Middle East, seeing the region as the next potential global crypto hub due to its business-friendly regulatory licensing environment.

On April 29, Circle, the issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin, USDC (USDC), received an in-principle approval from the FSRA, moving one step closer to the full license to become a regulated money service provider in the United Arab Emirates.

A day earlier, the Stacks Asia DLT Foundation partnered with ADGM, becoming the first Bitcoin-based organization to establish an official presence in the Middle East, Cointelegraph reported on April 28.

As part of the partnership, the Stacks Foundation aims to advance progressive regulatory frameworks in the Middle East.

“We’re not just focused locally — our team is engaged in global conversations, advocating for frameworks that balance decentralization, security, innovation, and compliance surrounding the unlocking of Bitcoin capital,” Kyle Ellicott, executive director at Stacks Asia DLT Foundation, told Cointelegraph.

The foundation is also developing the Bitcoin Capital Activation Framework, described as a comprehensive policy blueprint to help regulators enable Bitcoin utility in their jurisdictions.

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Politics

Crypto.com secures EU license to launch crypto financial derivatives

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4 hours ago

May 21, 2025

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Crypto.com secures EU license to launch crypto financial derivatives

Mobile-first crypto exchange and payment platform Crypto.com secured a license allowing it to offer cryptocurrency financial derivatives in the European Economic Area.

According to a May 21 announcement, Crypto.com secured a Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) license.

“We have already expanded our brand presence in Europe since receiving our MiCA licence and we now look forward to providing customers across the region even more ways to engage with our platform through these new offerings,” said Crypto.com’s co-founder and CEO, Kris Marszalek.

The announcement followed Crypto.com receiving in-principle approval to operate across the European Union under a Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) license in mid-January. The company received regulatory approval for its acquisition of Cyprus-based trading services firm A.N. Allnew Investments from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).

Crypto.com did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

A popular strategy

The company is not the first crypto entity to obtain a MiFID license by acquiring a Cyprus-based financial firm. On May 20, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced the launch of regulated derivatives trading on its platform under the European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).

Like Crypto.com, a Cyprus-based entity played a role in the strategy, with Kraken relying on MiFID II-regulated entity Payward Europe Digital Solutions to offer its derivatives. The launch followed Kraken completing its acquisition of the futures trading platform NinjaTrader earlier in May as its first-quarter revenue jumped 19% year-on-year to $471.7 million.

Crypto derivatives are all the rage

Recently, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his firm will continue to look for merger and acquisition opportunities, after acquiring crypto derivatives platform Deribit. The comments came after the publicly listed US crypto exchange earlier this month agreed to acquire Deribit, one of the world’s biggest crypto derivatives trading platforms.

Major crypto exchange Gemini has also recently received regulatory approval to expand crypto derivatives trading across Europe. Lastly, decentralized finance platform Synthetix will also venture further into crypto derivatives with plans to re-acquire the crypto options platform Derive.

Crypto.com has made its fair share of acquisitions. Those include Fintek Securities, Charterprime, Orion Principals and SEC-registered broker-dealer Watchdog Capital.

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Politics

SEC’s Peirce says NFT royalties do not make tokens securities

Published

5 hours ago

May 21, 2025

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SEC’s Peirce says NFT royalties do not make tokens securities

United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce said many non-fungible tokens (NFTs), including those with mechanisms to pay creator royalties, likely fall outside the purview of federal securities laws.

In a recent speech, Peirce said NFTs that allow artists to earn resale revenue do not automatically qualify as securities. Unlike stocks, NFTs are programmable assets that distribute proceeds to developers or artists. The SEC official said that mirrors how streaming platforms compensate musicians and filmmakers.

“Just as streaming platforms pay royalties to the creator of a song or video each time a user plays it, an NFT can enable artists to benefit from the appreciation in the value of their work after its initial sale,” Peirce said.

Peirce added that the feature does not provide NFT owners any rights or interest in any business enterprise or profits “traditionally associated with securities.”

SEC never prohibited NFT royalties

Oscar Franklin Tan, chief legal officer of Enjin core contributor Atlas Development Services, told Cointelegraph that the recent remarks by Peirce on NFTs and creator royalties have been widely misunderstood.

Peirce had clarified that NFTs that send resale royalties to artists are not necessarily securities, a view Tan says is legally sound but mischaracterized in some media reports.

“So Hester Peirce said that an NFT that sends royalties back to the creator after a sale is not a security. This is correct, but the way some media reported this is completely out of context,” Tan told Cointelegraph. “The actual context is that this is not controversial, and it was never considered a security.”

The lawyer said US securities law focuses on regulating investments and not compensating creators for their work.

“The artist or creator is not an investor, not a passive third party in the NFT,” he said, noting that royalty payments are not considered investment income.

Instead, Tan told Cointelegraph that this type of earning is “analogous to business income,” which the SEC does not regulate. He added:

“The SEC never prohibited contracts where artists and creators get royalties from secondary sales of their work, not royalties from paper contracts or blockchain protocols.”

Tan explained that the legal distinction becomes more complicated when NFTs promise shared profits from royalties to multiple holders beyond the original creator.

Tan also urged regulators and market participants to apply traditional legal reasoning to new blockchain technologies. “Ask yourself, if this were done by pen and paper instead of blockchain, would there still be a regulatory issue?” he said. “If none, slow down.”

OpenSea calls on the SEC to exempt NFT marketplaces from oversight

While NFT royalties may not have been a controversial SEC issue, NFT marketplaces are a different case. In August 2024, NFT trading platform OpenSea received a Wells notice from the SEC, alleging that NFTs traded on the marketplace could qualify as unregistered securities.

On Feb. 22, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer announced that the SEC has officially closed its investigation into the platform. The executive said that this was a win for the industry.

Following the conclusion of the SEC’s investigation, OpenSea’s lawyers penned a letter to Peirce, who leads the SEC’s Crypto Task Force. OpenSea general counsel Adele Faure and deputy general counsel Laura Brookover said in an April 9 letter that NFT marketplaces don’t qualify as brokers under US securities laws.

The lawyers said the marketplaces don’t execute transactions or act as intermediaries. The lawyers urged the SEC to “clearly state that NFT marketplaces like OpenSea do not qualify as exchanges under federal securities laws.”

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