Melania Trumps much-discussed online auction, featuring a hat she wore at the White House during a 2018 visit by President Emmanuel Macron of France, ended up turning into a victim of the crash in the cryptocurrency market.

Mrs. Trump decided to hold an online auction pairing the white, broad-brimmed hat and a watercolor of her wearing it, along with a virtual piece of art, called a nonfungible token, or NFT, which shows an animated version of her wearing the hat.

The three-piece package, called Head of State Collection, 2022, was intended to open with a minimum bid of about $250,000, according to a news release from Mrs. Trump in early January announcing the sale. But bids were only accepted in the cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain called SOL, which was then trading at a price of about $170 per token.

The one-of-a-kind NFT will be minted on Solanas blockchain, the website promoting the sale boasted.

But in the weeks since, SOL, along with most other cryptocurrencies, has suffered major declines in value. As the auction closed early Wednesday, each SOL was worth about $95.

A total of only five bids appeared to have been made on Mrs. Trumps items since the auction started, each hovering around the required minimum bid of 1,800 Solana tokens. As of 3 a.m. Wednesday, when the auction was scheduled to end, the final listed bid was around $170,000, with the exact dollar value fluctuating along with the volatile crypto market.

Mrs. Trump has said that a portion of the proceeds will be used to help provide children in foster care with access to educational programs focused on computer science and technology. But she has not said how much of the proceeds she will keep herself.

Mrs. Trump could hold on to the Solana tokens and hope that their value increases. Or the dip in value might continue, leaving her with an even smaller take.

This is the second NFT sale Mrs. Trump has held since December. In the first, a group of limited edition NFTs by the same French artist, Marc-Antoine Coulon, featured a virtual watercolor of Mrs. Trumps eyes, entitled Melanias Vision, which sold for $150 apiece.

The deflated results show that even though NFT-backed cryptocurrency auctions have become a magnet for celebrities others who have jumped into the game include Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan and Snoop Dogg it remains unclear if the virtual currency system is reliable enough to build a profitable business.

This is just evidence that none of the cryptocurrency assets provide a good, stable enough means of payment, said Dan Awrey, a Cornell University law professor who studies money and payment systems. It is just too volatile.

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Melania Trumps Auction of Hat Hit by Plunge in Cryptocurrency - The New York Times

The UK has less than 12 months to regain its footing on cryptocurrency.

The UK has less than 12 months to regain its footing on cryptocurrency or face a loss of talent and even its status as a global financial-services leader, the countrys former Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond warned.

Its frankly quite shocking that Britain has fallen behind other finance hubs such as the European Union in setting clear regulation on the burgeoning crypto industry, Hammond said in an interview. This is not the natural order of things, said the former politician, who stepped down in 2019 and is now a senior adviser to London-based institutional crypto exchange Copper.co.

The Financial Conduct Authority issued a proposal to restrict cryptoasset marketing to experienced investors this month, a day after the U.K. Treasury said it planned to tighten rules on crypto advertising. Other rules remain at the planning stages and a program to register crypto companies has faced delays.

Its credible that 2022 is available as a catch-up period, Hammond said. But if the U.K. appears manifestly behind the curve next year, digital-asset businesses are considering relocating their headquarters to jurisdictions which are further ahead with regulation, such as Switzerland, Monaco and Germany, he added.

Regulators around the world are grappling with the boom in volatile cryptocurrencies, whose dramatic price swings have brought in millions of retail traders, along with institutions trying to harness the underlying blockchain technology to improve how they handle trades. While some crypto boosters see regulation as a threat to the decentralized nature of the asset class, others hope adding protection for users will lead to mainstream adoption.

For Hammond, the U.K. needs to regulate if it stands a chance of establishing what will become the core plumbing for many forms of trading. Thats the big prize, he said. Its not about cryptoassets. Its about establishing the U.K. as a major base for digital trading infrastructure. He said the situation has become existential for the U.K. financial-services market, which generated 8.6% of the nations total economic output in 2020.

Founded in 2018, Copper.co was recently in talks with investors including Tiger Global Management, SoftBank Group Corp. and Accel in a funding round that would value the startup at $3 billion, Bloomberg reported in November.

Copper will prosper whatever, Hammond said. Coppers strong and publicly expressed preference is to do that from its U.K. base, but if it cant -- if its not able to because U.K. regulation doesnt keep pace, if permissions and authorizations are not forthcoming in the U.K. -- that isnt going to stop Copper moving at pace to exploit this emerging technology.

Around 2.3 million Brits own some form of cryptoasset, research undertaken by the FCA in January 2021 showed, and the market has grown considerably since then. The Treasury said in its Jan. 18 statement that it would introduce secondary legislation to bring cryptoassets under financial promotions rules when parliamentary time allows.

When parliamentary time allows, Im afraid, is a time-honored expression in government, which means long grass into kick. That isnt going to do, Hammond said, noting that the EUs Markets in Cryptoassets (MiCA) regulation is already firmly underway.

A spokesperson for the Treasury said it supports innovation in crypto, but that its also vital that consumers and the financial system are protected from certain risks. They added that the government is still considering the findings of its consultation on cryptoassets and stablecoins, which closed in March 2021.

Cryptoasset businesses including Copper are operating with temporary permission from the FCA. The backlog of applications for full registration forced the watchdog to extend the stopgap regime several times, with the latest deadline for approvals set at March 31. Coppers application has not yet been signed off, and it could be forced to stop trading if its not approved in time.

An FCA spokesperson said the regulator continues to work with the Treasury on creating crypto rules. More than 80% of firms that have been assessed for registration have been rejected or withdrawn as a result of low-quality submissions, they added.

Other regions have adopted stiffer rules on marketing crypto including Singapore, which suggested businesses avoid advertising their products to the public entirely. Hammond said the statement was a signal that Singaporean authorities viewed the underyling blockchain technology to be the future of traditional finance.

I know these guys very well. They are absolutely not, sort of, gambling money-type people, he added. It will be because they understand very well that establishing your financial services center as a hub for digital asset trading will place you at the forefront of the tokenization and digitization of traditional financial services trading in due course, and thats going to be a huge, huge prize.

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Shocking! UK has botched Cryptocurrency space? - HT Tech

Coinbase, one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, is adding a new tax center to its app and website to help US customers work out how much they might owe to the IRS as a result of their crypto transactions, the company has announced. The section is designed to gather every taxable transaction into one place to simplify matters come tax day.

Although cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin often appear similar to the fiat money were accustomed to, in the eyes of the IRS, the digital assets are actually property, according to this FAQ from the federal agency. That means cryptocurrency transactions may need to be reported as capital gains or losses, and that means keeping track of a cryptocurrencys value as its bought and sold over time. Documenting these transactions can get complicated quickly if youre regularly buying and selling.

According to Coinbase, its new section will show a personalized summary of [a customers] taxable activity on Coinbase, broken out over time by realized gains/losses and miscellaneous income. This information can then be taken to an accountant or used with tax software like TurboTax. If youre someone whos transferred crypto to external exchanges, wallets, or other DeFi (decentralized finance) services, then Coinbase says its customers can also get tax reports for up to 3,000 of these transactions free with CoinTracker.

CNBC reported last year on suspicions that a lot of the taxes due on cryptocurrency transactions are going unpaid. Although confusion about the evolving tax rules about cryptocurrencies is one reason for this, another is that exchanges like Coinbase have historically not given as much help as traditional brokerage houses to customers when it comes to reporting their gains and losses for tax purposes.

The new Coinbase tax section is accessible from the profile icon in the top right-hand corner of the interface, where Taxes will appear as a menu item. In its app, the Taxes section is accessible from the Profile & Settings menu, accessible from the top left of the apps interface. In addition to the new tools, Coinbase is also planning to offer written guides and help videos in the coming weeks to explain cryptocurrency and digital asset taxes, but for now, this overview from CNET is a helpful place to start.

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Coinbase makes it easier to report cryptocurrency taxes - The Verge

While the cryptocurrency buzz is still unsettling, NFTs are acquiring a fast pace in the virtual ecosystem

Since Bitcoins inception in 2009, blockchain technology has evolved above and beyond. In 2022, it has reached far more than what people originally expected. Blockchain technology houses any form of digital assets and keeps them safe in an encrypted key. It has the potential to give value to everything like fiat currencies and artworks in the digital world. For example, fiat currencies are converted to stablecoins like Tether and USD Coin while artworks are called NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). While the cryptocurrency buzz is still unsettling, NFTs are acquiring a fast pace in the virtual ecosystem.

Cryptocurrencies have been stealing the stage for three straight years now. Since the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed and people started trying their hands on virtual tokens, cryptocurrencies became extremely popular. More than the popularity, they gained prominence and made many people rich over the years. However, 2022 doesnt seem to be the year for cryptocurrency. Since the beginning, even major digital assets like Bitcoin and Etheruem are experiencing a bullish trend. On the other hand, NFTs are taking the center stage. According to a report by DappRadar, consumers spend about US$100 million on NFTs in 2020. But it has drastically risen to US$22 billion, which is a 21,9100% growth in just a year. Today, interested people are buying Non-Fungible Tokens on digital platforms like OpenSea, Rarible, etc.

Both Cryptocurrency and NFTs are lucrative investments. If you think digital tokens are extremely volatile, then Non-Fungible Tokens is not your thing. Although NFTs and cryptocurrencies share the same baseline called blockchain technology, they are different in nature and carry diverse features and values. But the recent trending topic is NFTs. Big Non-Fungible Token sales like Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitters Tweet, for US$2.9 million and Beeples artwork for US$69 million is making headlines everywhere. When NFTs are gaining prominence like never before, lets explore the possibilities of these digital artworks during the cryptocurrency market upside down.

Non-Fungible Tokens represent anything that is unique like furniture, artwork, jewelry, etc. NFTs basically represents a unique object or an artwork that can be sold online. They are different from cryptocurrencies because they are not interchangeable, but fungible. However, similar to virtual tokens, they can be traded via a blockchain network and all the transactions and movement of NFTs are closely kept in context.

When a product is brought into the NFT world, it gets private ownership and tradeability. When somebody buys the Non-Fungible Token, the ownership of the product moves, which is the private key, is given to the other person. One thing that makes NFTs unique is their ability to promote the originality of the product. You can sell the same artwork on social media or any physical medium, but there are chances it might get copied by others. However, on NFTs, the owner of the artwork remains at the help and the works cant be copied. It gives owners an option to brag about the uniqueness they possess. Since there is only one original work on NFTs, its value also increases based on the demand and interest.

Recently, people are using a new method called scholarships to rent the Non-Fungible Tokens to make money. These are basically virtual tools, creatures, or skins for games that are much required to participate. They lend them to players and collect rent.

Cryptocurrencies are increasingly used in everyday life. Over the past couple of years, people are using digital tokens as money that can help them make transactions on a daily basis. On the other hand, even well-known brands are coming forward to accept cryptocurrency payments. However, NFTs are not this lucrative. They are unique so they cant be traded very often. Most importantly, NFTs cant be traded for each other like cryptocurrencies. Both cryptocurrency and NFTs are accessible through a digital ledger that makes transactions and ownership shifts transparent.

As mentioned earlier, an NFT cant be traded for another while we can do the same with a cryptocurrency. Yes, we can trade a Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin as they carry the same value. But we cant do the same with NFTs as the value differs.

Bitcoin marks the most remarkable success of blockchain technology implementation. Yes, BTC has emerged as the first cryptocurrency in 2009, paving the way for more digital assets to come. Today, nearly 80 million people are investing in Bitcoin and most of them are using it as a store of value or an option to trade. BTC is the best option for people who wants to avoid government regulations and tax issues. NFT is a branch of blockchain technology that puts collectibles on the network so they can be easily traded.

In 2022, Bitcoin still seems to be the winner even after losing value for three consecutive months. Although NFTs have some solid features and advancements, they are similar to altcoins. More than being a store of value, NFTs are emerging to be speculative. On the other hand, Bitcoin has actually helped many people become millionaires over the years.

According to the New York Times, Non-Fungible Tokens have been around since the mid-2010s. It is just that they gained popularity recently. The recent buzz around NFTs is solely created because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the digital evolution. Just like how we cant predict what will happen in the cryptocurrency sphere, the NFT world also remains behind the shadow. But one thing for sure is that it wont go away any time soon.

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Will NFTs Step Over the Cryptocurrency Buzz in 2022 and Beyond? - Analytics Insight

Our mission: providing resources to help the public understand how their First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition work, and how they can be protected.

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First Amendment Center | Freedom Forum Institute

Federal government agents should not have free rein to violate the rights of the public with impunity. That's the uncontroversial premise behind a spate of petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court that pertain to law enforcement officers who breached clearly established law, and whose victims want to seek recourse.

Recourse can prove elusive, if not impossible.

The Court has yet to announce if it will hear two of those cases. The first pertains to a federal officer who devised a fake sex trafficking ring and jailed a teenage girl on bogus charges for two years. The second involves a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent who, outside of a bar, tried to shoot a man he had a personal issue with. Federal courts in both cases found that the two government agents violated clearly established law but are protected by absolute immunity and thus cannot be sued solely because of their status with the federal government.

But one similar case has worked its way up to the justices, who are scheduled to hear it on March 2though it appears they may be poised to make it even more difficult for victims of federal government abuse to achieve any meaningful remedy when their rights are violated.

In 2014, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Erik Egbert followed a man to a bed and breakfast where he was staying in Washington state. That man was from Turkey, and Egbert assumed the guest may have come to the U.S. illegally based on the inn's proximity to the Canadian border.

He was incorrect. But Egbert pursued the man and declined to leave the private property after its owner, Robert Boule, requested that he do so. In response, Egbert pushed Boule into a car and then to the ground, ultimately resulting in injuries to Boule's back that required medical treatment. Boule subsequently filed a complaint with Egbert's supervisor, which the Border Patrol agent countered with threats to sic the IRS on him with a business audita promise he made good on.

It's been almost eight years, and Boule has not yet had his day in court, having spent the better part of the last decade asking the government for the privilege to appear before a jury and ask for damages. Thus far, he's been successful: Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Boule and said he should have the opportunity to bring a civil suit against Egbert for infringing on his First and Fourth Amendment rights.

That shouldn't be surprising. Under a 1971 Supreme Court precedentBivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcoticsfederal agents may be sued when they violate someone's rights. But in recent years, the high court has proceeded to dilute its own decision in significant ways, now requiring that federal agents may not be sued if a federal judge pinpoints "special factors counseling hesitation." You can see where such a subjective standard might go awry.

It was that standard that shielded Officer Heather Weyker, who conjured the sex trafficking ring, and DHS Agent Ray Lamb, whose gun jammed when he attempted to shootthe man he had a feud with. Neither one received qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that protects certain government officials from civil liability if the way in which they misbehaved has not been "clearly established" in a prior court ruling. Weyker and Lamb did violate the law, as the courts acknowledged. Yet although they were denied qualified immunity, they received absolute immunity and can't be sued simply because of their status as a federal employeesomething that should signify a responsibility to protect the public, not a green light to violate their rights without fear of accountability.

Perhaps in a testament to the egregiousness of Egbert's misconduct, he did not clear the low bar passed over by Weyker and Lamb. So he is requesting that the Supreme Court lower the bar even further. A decision in Boule's favor would "undercut the ability of Border Patrol agents to fulfill their basic mission of securing the border, enforcing the immigration laws, and protecting national security," the government wrote in its petition for review, as if immigration officers must reserve the right to assault people and weaponize their power in illegal ways in order to do their jobs effectively.

"The stakes are very high," says Anya Bidwell, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that filed an amicus brief on Boule's behalf this week. If Egbert succeeds, "this would mean no Bivens remedy in the vast majority of cases. This would mean absolute immunity for federal police and other federal officials."

Based on the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence on the issue, it appears that scenario may be the likely outcomegiving federal agents carte blanche to break the same rules they are meant to uphold.

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A Border Patrol Agent Assaulted Him and Violated His First Amendment Rights. He May Never Get To Sue. - Reason

1. Opinion: How much do you really know about free speech and the First Amendment?  The Detroit News
2. College Students Are Losing Confidence in Their Free-Speech Rights  The Chronicle of Higher Education
3. Fewer students see freedom of speech as secure  Inside Higher Ed
4. Knight-Ipsos poll: College students covet free speech rights, but view them as increasingly fragile  Yahoo Finance
5. Commentary: Do Americans know what free speech is?  Jefferson City News Tribune
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Opinion: How much do you really know about free speech and the First Amendment? - The Detroit News

I respectfully disagree with E. Jane Sinner's letter on this subject .

Sinner considers the Catholic bishops' voicing of their opinions to their "flocks" about what they consider to be bad policies at the University of North Dakota a violation of the First Amendment. Her reasoning is that it violates the idea of the separation of church and state.

Unfortunately there is no mention of the "separation of church and state" in that amendment. The Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." I'm not understanding how the bishops' letter causes the government to establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof.

Ironically, she seems to ignore other aspects of the First Amendment, the remainder of which reads: "...or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It seems to me that the freedom of speech applies to the bishops' letter, as well as the ability of the Bishops or members of their flocks to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The fact is that UND has not created the rules in question, they are just being considered . The Bishops, finding the proposed rules undesirable, are encouraging the school to reconsider. Should they choose not to implement the new rules, UND will be no closer to becoming a religious institution, let alone specifically Catholic, than if they choose otherwise.

She is correct in her final statement: UND is under no obligation to recognize the bishops' concerns or any other citizen's concerns.

Mark Sornsin is a resident of Fargo.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

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Letter: Catholic bishops are not violating the First Amendment - INFORUM

The first amendment to EU legislation to be submitted in Irish in the European Parliament has been proposed by Sen Kelly MEP.

The amendment was made to an International Trade Committee (INTA) opinion on a Foreign Affairs (AFET) report on the defence of multilateralism.

It is the first time in the history of Irelands membership of the European Union that an amendment has been proposed in Irish, and that the newly enhanced status of the language has been used to amend legislation before the Parliament.

Before full parity was achieved with the EUs 23 official languages at the beginning of this year the use of Irish was limited in the Parliament. However, following the end of a derogation that commenced in 2007, MEPs now have the right to speak Irish in committees and they can also use Irish while contributing to legislation before the Parliament.

The Ireland South Fine Gael MEP, who has spoken Irish regularly during plenary sessions of the European Parliament since his election to Brussels in 2009, said it was an honour for him to propose the first amendment in Irish in the European Parliament.

Ba mhr an onir dom an chad leas as Gaeilge a mholadh i bParliamint na hEorpa. Is cid stairiil seo thaobh na Gaeilge de, he said.

Conradh na Gaeilge president, Dr Niall Comer, welcomed the development, saying: Conradh na Gaeilge applauds Sen Kelly, MEP, for using the new status of the Irish language in the European Union and for providing a practical example of this status.

He said it shows clearly the success of a campaign organised by the Irish language community to achieve full recognition for Irish in the EU.

Furthermore, it clearly shows that Irish has now taken its rightful place in the European Union, with the same status as all other official languages of the European Union.

When Ireland joined the EU in 1973 the government did not ask for parity for Irish but only to have the treaties translated into Irish and for Irish citizens to have the right to communicate with the EU institutions in Irish.

The upgrade in the status of Irish, which was described by President Michael D. Higgins as a significant achievement and an important recognition of Irelands linguistic identity, is expected to result in new career opportunities for Irish graduates wishing to work in the European Union.

From January 1st, 2022, all legislation enacted onwards has to be translated into Irish and the number of Irish language staff working in the European institutions is expected to increase in the first months of this year to around 200.

A number of measures were taken during the derogation to boost Irish language capacity and to increase the availability of documents and language resources in the language.

Since 2016, the EU institutions have held five annual conferences on Irish translation and interpretation and conferences promoting careers for lawyer-linguists in preparation for the end of the derogation.

The EU commission and the Irish Government have also organised an annual young translators competition for Irish-speaking secondary school pupils since 2017.

The overall cost to the EU budget of the 2 million pages that are translated each year is 349 million, which is the equivalent of 0.2 per cent of the EUs overall budget.

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First amendment 'as Gaeilge' proposed for EU legislation - The Irish Times

This week, Connecticut put the final nail in the coffin of a state law that violated the free speech of charity fundraisers.

The First Amendment covers a lot of ground that may not be immediately obvious. Most probably understand that it protects peoples right to peacefully protest, their right to express their opinion, and even their right to burn an American flag.

What is, perhaps, less obvious, is the protection the First Amendment provides to nonprofit fundraisers and donors.

A good fundraiser knows that garnering donations means speaking from the heart about issues for which they care so passionately. It means building personal relationships with prospective and existing donors.

Fundraising is, in short, a personal experience, and, like most things in life, it doesnt go by a script, but rather by instinct and spontaneous human connection.

But a Connecticut law intervened in this process and prevented fundraisers from doing their job.

The law forced paid solicitors to tell the state not only when they planned to speak to a potential donor, but also to provide the state with a script of exactly what they were going to say.

This didnt sit right with Adam Kissel, a fundraiser for the Jack Miller Center, a nonprofit focused on civic education. Adam believed in the organizations mission to help professors and instructors teach students about Americas founding principles, government, and history.

But his work was stopped in its tracks before he even got started, all thanks to this absurd state law.

Governments cannot poke their nose into private political conversations with potential donors any more than they can force a person to tell government officials what political opinions they hold. It doesnt matter if you are a college student, an activist, or, in this case, a fundraiser. The First Amendment protects all individuals from government intrusion on free speech.

But this law took things even further.

Not only did fundraisers have to provide state officials with a script, but they also demanded that the names of donors be recorded and reported on demand, even if the donor gave only $1. Anyone who went off script was subject to a $5,000 fine. Worse still, they could even face a year in prison.

In addition to the chilling effect the rules had on fundraisers, this is a violation of a donors right to privacy, especially in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a California regulation requiring charities to disclose the identities of major donors.

After Connecticut refused to follow the lead of other states like West Virginia, Pacific Legal Foundation helped Adam fight back with a federal First Amendment lawsuit.

In July 2021, Adam scored a major victory in his fight to speak freely to potential donors about the causes he supports when the judge granted us a preliminary injunction. It was a great first step, but the decision had not yet been made permanentuntil last week.

The State of Connecticut conceded that the challenged laws would be found unconstitutional. In addition topermanentlystopping enforcement of thechallengedlaws, the State also agreed to post a notice on its website so that fundraisers would know these onerous requirements were no more.

With this victory, everyone inConnecticutis now free to advocate for issues they believe in, without Connecticuts unconstitutional restrictions on fundraisers speech.

All forms of free speech deserve protection. When any facet of free speech is violated, the entire First Amendment stands in jeopardy.

The government cannot demand that you disclose in advance what you are going to say and provide a script before you can speak. Nor can the government rob citizens of their privacy when they donate to a nonprofit.

A few other states, such as Tennessee, still have similarly repressive laws on the books; and politicians in other states continue to push policies which strip away donor privacy. Hopefully, these other states will take note of Connecticuts capitulation and restore the free speech rights of fundraisers and the privacy rights of donors without needing to be sued.

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Federal judge re-affirms free speech victory, invalidating Connecticut's unconstitutional donor privacy and fundraising registration laws - Pacific...