Crypto_Bilawal official

Iran said its military was “waiting” for a possible U.S. ground invasion—accusing the U.S. of planning to deploy ground troops while publicly talking about potential peace negotiations—days after the U.S. deployed 3,500 more sailors and Marines to the Middle East.

Key Facts
Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday accused the U.S. of “secretly planning” a ground invasion despite “sending messages of negotiation and dialogue.”

The Iranian military was “waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever,” Ghalibaf threatened, according to a translation of the message on Iranian state news reported by the Associated Press.

Ghalibaf also said Iran would not surrender to the U.S., insisting “far be it from us to accept humiliation.”

Pakistan hosted talks about de-escalating the Iran war with officials from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey on Sunday, to potentially offer a venue for peace negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in the future, Reuters reported.

The U.S. previously sent a 15-point ceasefire plan proposal to Iran through Pakistani intermediaries, special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Thursday—although Iran has reportedly already rejected this offer.

Key Background
About 3,500 sailors and Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in the region on Friday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media. The Marines arrived onboard the U.S.S. Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, and are part of a specialized unit that could help the military seize Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. The unit was deployed with aircraft and “amphibious assault and tactical assets,” Central Command said. The Pentagon began drawing up plans for weeks of ground operations in Iran, the Washington Post reported on Saturday night, however it is unclear if President Donald Trump will approve these plans. Earlier last week, Axios reported the Trump administration was considering further troop deployments as part of a “final blow” against Iran, while the Wall Street Journal reported this could mean up to 17,000 more U.S. soldiers, including roughly 10,000 ground troops.

What Has The Trump Administration Said?
The president has not committed to deploying ground troops to Iran, instead threatening the nation with continued air strikes. "No, I'm not putting troops anywhere," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on March 19. “If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you. But I'm not putting troops. We will do whatever is necessary." Speaking to reporters in France on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was confident the U.S. could achieve its stated objectives of destroying Iran’s missile factories, drone factories, air force and navy without a ground invasion. “We are ahead of schedule on most of them, and we can achieve them without any ground troops—without any.”
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Crypto Casino Founder Richard Kim Arrested After Gambling Away Investor Funds
Richard Kim, the founder of crypto casino Zero Edge, was arrested on Tuesday following allegations that he had gambled away investors' funds.
According to an FBI complaint filed on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, Kim "fraudulently induced investors to invest in Zero Edge, a cryptocurrency technology company he founded, and then misappropriated millions of dollars in those investors’ funds."
The FBI said Kim lost "nearly all" of the $7 million he raised from investors and charged him with securities fraud and wire fraud. According to court records, Kim posted a secured bond of $250,000 and put up $100,000 in "cash or real property" to secure it.
CoinDesk was first to report on the Zero Edge incident in July of last year. In an interview at the time, Kim revealed to CoinDesk that he had gambled away more than $3.67 million of his investors' funds through a series of high-risk leveraged crypto trades.
"The downfall began with a careless mistake — a phishing site that cost $80k," Kim said in his own recollection of what went wrong, which he shared with CoinDesk in a written statement that he later published as a public apology. "This triggered my old demons, the need to 'make it back' to preserve my reputation."
According to Kim, he "started down a negative spiral of leverage trading, raising more capital, and hiding the truth."
After losing most of the $7 million he had raised for Zero Edge, Kim told CoinDesk he reported himself to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's public tip line.
"Part of my rationale in reaching out proactively to the SEC was to say, OK guys, I really f—d up. I lost this money. It was grossly negligent. But I didn't intend to go run away with this money," he told CoinDesk in an interview.
According to the FBI complaint, Kim's previous accounts "misleadingly described where investors' funds had gone, and why, and omitted to inform investors that certain funds had been transferred to Shuffle.com, the gambling website."
Kim's claim that he initially lost $80,000 to a phishing scam and never “mix[ed] personal and business funds,” according to the FBI, failed to account for the fact that he had also sent company funds to an online sportsbook and personal crypto investment accounts.
Kim did not immediately respond to a request for comment this week.
Kim's arrest marks a striking fall from grace. A former executive of Galaxy, the crypto investment firm headed by Michael Novogratz, Kim also led elite trading desks at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. Before that, he was an attorney with the prestigious law firm Cleary Gottlieb.
Galaxy was among the investors in Zero Edge who lost money as a result of Kim's activities.
"Mr. Kim left Galaxy in March 2024 to start Zero Edge, a company in which Galaxy had an immaterial balance-sheet investment," said Michael Wursthorn, Galaxy's head of communications. "Upon learning of certain actions taken by Mr. Kim in his role at Zero Edge, we, along with other investors, reported his conduct to the authorities."
Kim pitched Zero Edge as a first-of-its-kind crypto casino that would level the playing field for gamblers through improved transparency.
Zero Edge never launched, but Kim told CoinDesk last year that he was motivated to build it because of his history with gambling addiction and his frustration that the house frequently had an opaque and unfair edge over players.
Read more: Crypto Casino Founder Apologizes for Gambling Away Investor Funds
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Bank of America has reached a $72.5m (£54.6m) settlement in a lawsuit brought on behalf of victims of Jeffrey Epstein, who had accused the bank of facilitating his sex trafficking operation.The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in October by a Florida woman who says she was abused by Epstein "on at least 100 occasions" between 2011 and 2019 and held two accounts at Bank of America at the direction of his business team.It alleged that the bank had "a plethora of information regarding Epstein's sex trafficking operation but chose profit over protecting the victims".In the court documents, Bank of America says the settlement makes "no admission of liability" or "wrongdoing" on its part. The settlement was reached earlier this month, but details of the deal had not been revealed until documents were filed on Friday in a federal court in New York. They now await a judge's approval. Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for the victims, told the BBC in a statement earlier this month that the resolution was "one more step on the road to much deserved justice".It marks the third such settlement by a major bank, after JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank agreed to pay out $290m and $75m respectively.The lawsuit, brought on behalf of a "Jane Doe", cites a record of "incredibly alarming and erratic banking behaviour" in her own Bank of America accounts, which were used by Epstein's team. She says she met Epstein in Russia in 2011, and was controlled and sexually abused by him up until his death in jail in August 2019. The financier's death was ruled a suicide, and Jane Doe called it her "ultimate escape".The lawsuit also points to more than $150m paid to Epstein by billionaire Leon Black, co-founder of Apollo Global, for "purported 'tax and estate planning advice'", via Black's Bank of America account.Black, who stepped down from Apollo amid scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, has denied wrongdoing. He was questioned as part of the case last week.Bank of America had previously urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it had provided routine services to people who at the time had no known links to Epstein, calling the complaint "threadbare and meritless"."While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs," Bank of America told the BBC in a statement on Saturday.
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Money Is Just Signed Claims: Rethinking Stablecoins with Sign Protocol
🧠 A New Mental Model for Money
For centuries, money has been treated as a physical or digital “thing.” But a deeper truth is emerging in crypto:
Money is not an object — it’s a claim, backed by trust and verified by signatures.
Every bank balance, every dollar, every stablecoin is essentially a promise:
A claim on reserves
A claim on future redemption
A claim enforced by rules
Stablecoins make this explicit. And protocols like Sign Protocol take it even further — turning money into programmable, verifiable claims.
🔗 The Stablecoin Reality in 2025–2026
Stablecoins are rapidly becoming the backbone of digital finance:
They are designed to maintain stable value (usually pegged to fiat like USD) �
Investopedia
Modern regulations now require 1:1 backing with real assets like cash or treasuries �
Latham & Watkins
Holders effectively own a priority claim on reserves if issuers fail �
The White House
This is crucial.
👉 A stablecoin is not money itself — it is a digitally signed claim on money held elsewhere.
Visual: Money as Signed Claims
✍️ Enter Sign Protocol: Formalizing Trust
Sign Protocol reframes this system by focusing on attestations:
A stablecoin becomes a signed statement:
“This token is backed 1:1 by reserves.”
Instead of blind trust, users verify:
Who signed the claim
What conditions apply
Whether it’s still valid
This shifts stablecoins from:
❌ Opaque financial promises
✅ Transparent, verifiable claims
⚙️ From Tokens to Attestations
Traditional stablecoins:
Store value in tokens
Require trust in issuer
Sign-based stablecoins:
Store claims + proofs
Allow independent verification
Example transformation:
Traditional Model
Sign Protocol Model
“USDC = $1”
“Signed proof: issuer holds $1 reserve”
Trust issuer
Verify cryptographic attestation
Static token
Dynamic, auditable claim
🏗️ Why This Matters for the Future
1. Programmable Trust
Money can now include conditions:
“Valid only if reserves audited”
“Expires if collateral drops”
2. Cross-Chain Interoperability
Claims can move across chains without losing meaning:
Ethereum → Cardano → Layer 2
Same claim, different execution layer
3. Reduced Counterparty Risk
Instead of trusting institutions blindly:
Users verify proofs
Risk becomes measurable, not assumed
Regulatory Alignment Is Accelerating This Shift
Recent frameworks like the GENIUS Act (2025) show where things are going:
Mandatory full reserve backing �
Latham & Watkins
Strict disclosure and auditing rules �
Arnold & Porter
Legal recognition of stablecoin holders as priority claimants �
The White House
This is essentially governments saying:
“Stablecoins must behave like enforceable claims.”
Which aligns perfectly with the Sign Protocol philosophy.
🚀 The Bigger Idea: Money as a Verifiable System
If we zoom out:
Gold = claim on physical scarcity
Fiat = claim on government authority
Stablecoins = claim on reserves
Sign Protocol = claim on cryptographic truth
The evolution is clear:
👉 From trust-based money → proof-based money
🧩 Final Thought
The next generation of finance won’t just ask:
“What is this asset worth?”
It will ask:
“What exactly is being claimed — and can I verify it?”
That’s the shift Sign Protocol represents.
And once you see money as signed claims, you realize:
Stablecoins aren’t the final form of digital money —
they’re just the beginning of verifiable finance.
#SignDigitalSovereignInfra

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