The creator of Twitter invests in crypto projects

One of Twitter’s co-founders, Jack Dorsey, recently leaked the news that he is going to financially support the messaging app Signal, a very committed platform for the crypto ecosystem.  

Dorsey’s plan is to subsidize the company by $1 million each year, with the goal of developing a more open and decentralized Internet, a goal Dorsey says he has been unable to achieve with Twitter. 

Twitter founder’s commitment to the crypto world

The goal of Twitter‘s founder is well understood; he has always been an advocate of blockchain and the crypto universe. Not succeeding to make Twitter decentralized and open before Elon Musk‘s acquisition of the company, the founder of the social platform is now looking to invest in other similar companies. 

“Cryptocurrencies have no physical barriers and are accessible anywhere and by anyone, but there is a need to educate people about this new type of currency.”

Dorsey made the announcement in a blog post yesterday where he shared his principles on social media and the new world of Web3. Explaining that social media should not be owned by an individual or a few, but should be something public. 

Dorsey is now backing Signal, which was founded in 2014 as a free end-to-end encrypted messaging service and has proven popular with users who prioritize privacy. It got a boost in 2018 with $50 million in funding from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.

This funding was used to establish the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing open source privacy and communications technologies. Acton has served as executive chairman of the Signal Foundation since 2018 and took over as Signal’s interim CEO in January when its creator Moxie Marlinspike stepped down from the role.

The SEC takes action on influencers responsible for market manipulation 

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently filed a lawsuit against eight influencers, alleging a $100 million stock manipulation scheme.

The SEC filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas. 

Among the 8 suspects are Youtubers, podcasters, and startup co-founders. According to the SEC, since at least January 2020, seven of the defendants have promoted themselves as successful traders and cultivated hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and in stock trading chats on Discord. 

These seven defendants allegedly purchased certain stocks and then encouraged their substantial social media following to purchase those selected stocks by posting price targets or indicating that they were buying, holding, or adding to their stock positions. However, as the complaint alleges, when stock prices and/or trading volumes increased in the promoted stocks, people regularly sold their stocks without ever having disclosed their plans to dump the stocks while they were promoting them.

Joseph Sansone, head of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Market Abuse Unit, said:

“As our complaint alleges, the defendants used social media to amass a large following of novice investors and then took advantage of their followers by repeatedly feeding them a steady diet of misinformation, which resulted in fraudulent profits of approximately $100 million. Today’s action exposes the true motivation of these alleged scammers and serves as another warning that investors should be wary of unsolicited advice they encounter online.”

The people charged on the list include John Rybarcyzk, the creator of the Sapphire Trading forum, Edward Constantin (aka “MrZackMorris”), co-founder of Atlas Trading, “CEO” Perry Matlock, YouTuber, Thomas Cooperman and Gary Deel, podcasters, Mitchell Hennessey, Daniel Knight and Twitter influencer Stefan Hrvatin (aka “LadeBackk”).

The SEC charges seek permanent injunctions, disgorgement, prejudgment interest and civil penalties against each defendant for their manipulative actions in the $100 million stock scheme.