Boosted by jwz:
gregkh@social.kernel.org ("Greg K-H") wrote:
Prediction for the potential future:
When the AI coding agent companies are just about to run out of money, down to their last few % raised as none of their customers are actually paying the real cost required to run these services, they pivot and take all of the uploaded code that was willingly sent to them, turn it into thousands of products / services to sell / rent, disconnect the public api endpoints leaving their old customers helpless as they no longer remember how to program "in the raw" and can not understand their own codebases, and compete directly against them putting their own customers all out of business which finally results in a positive income stream and "validation" of the coding agent companies previously over-hyped business valuations.
"But copyright law will prevent this!" you say...


![The answer, of course, is that they never actually cared about these principles at all. Anyone who believed they did was dangerously naive. These were marketing slogans and talking points, deployed when convenient to ward off regulation and burnish crypto’s reputation, discarded the moment they might conflict with business interests. The atrocities of Trump’s regime have clearly done nothing to lose crypto’s support: Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz have each contributed another roughly $25 million apiece to the political machine that installed Trump and bought Congress.9 Gemini’s Winklevoss twins and Kraken have contributed at least $22 million and $2 million, respectively, to new pro-crypto super PACs and dark money groups that are even more explicitly Trump-aligned [I91, 93].a](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/115/980/732/749/992/989/original/19d3e188bd667d62.png)


![SEC The SEC has dismissed with prejudice its case against the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Filed in January 2023, the agency alleged that the company had violated securities laws with its Earn program, in which Gemini partnered with the Genesis crypto lender to offer Gemini customers up to 7.4% APY on assets they loaned through Genesis. When Genesis suffered major losses on loans to Three Arrows Capital [W3IGG] and Babel Finance [W3IGG], the company went under, and around $900 million in Gemini customers’ assets were suddenly locked up in bankruptcy proceedings [I17, 18, 42]. Now, the SEC has evidently decided no harm, no foul, stating: “The 100 percent in-kind return of Gemini Earn investors’ crypto assets through the Genesis Bankruptcy and the settlements noted above, and in the exercise of its discretion, the Commission believes the dismissal of the claims against Defendant is appropriate.”26](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/115/980/745/224/759/893/original/1bdb1ecb22d5843b.png)
![While “but we gave the money back” isn’t normally a successful defense (just ask Sam Bankman-Fried), contributing around $4.4 million to Trump’s campaign,27 donating an undisclosed amount to Trump’s ballroom project,28 spending $1 million to be among the first members of the Trump family-run Executive Branch club,29 investing in Donald Trump Jr.’s American Bitcoin venture,30 and committing $22 million to political projects backing pro-Trump crypto advocates in the midterms seems to have gone a long way. The SEC case was paused back in April [I81], and, as I wrote then, “it’s widely understood that these [pauses] mark the end of SEC scrutiny for these companies.” Two months later, as the Winklevoss twins stood behind Trump in the Oval Office as he signed the GENIUS Act stablecoin bill, Trump remarked about the crypto industry: “I got you guys out of so much trouble”. Thanking the Winklevosses specifically, he added: “They’ve got plenty of cash, and it’s great that you’re on our side.” [I89]](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/115/980/745/259/410/651/original/03b34560b005590e.png)
![The dismissal of the Gemini Earn enforcement action adds to a long list of crypto-focused cases and investigations that the SEC has paused, dismissed, or otherwise ended. That list also includes: Aave [I99], Binance [I85], Coinbase [I78], ConsenSys [I78], Crypto.com [I81], Cumberland DRW [I79], Dragonchain,31 Gemini (a separate investigation) [I78], Hex [I82], Immutable [I80], Kraken [I79], Ondo Finance [I98], OpenSea [I78], PayPal [I83], Ripple [I80], Robinhood [I78], Tron [I78], Uniswap [I78], Yuga Labs [I79], and the ZCash Foundation [I99].](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/115/980/745/285/727/909/original/b07cbed09a745ed8.png)



