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Washington, DC, USA; President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, outgoing United States President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden participate in the departure ceremony for the Bidens on the East Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC after the swearing-in of Donald Trump as President on January 20, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Biden’s preemptive pardons, Trumpcoin, Billionaires blow up, India convicts hospital rapist
5: With just minutes left in his term, President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to five members of his family, explaining that he feared people associated with him could be prosecuted under the Trump administration. Hours earlier, he pardoned Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as the members and staff of the Congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and police officers who testified before that committee. Biden also commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous activist who was controversially convicted of killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.
5.5 billion: A cryptocurrency token launched by President Donald Trump, known as $Trump, reached a value of nearly $5.5 billion within hours of its launch on Saturday. A Delaware company called CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC owns 80% of the coins, but it is unclear how much money Trump will make from this launch.
3: Oxfam, the UK-based anti-poverty charity, reported that the wealth of billionaires grew three times as fast in 2024 than in 2023, accelerating wealth inequality while the global rate of poverty has barely changed. The report comes as the World Economic Forum, the marquee gathering of the world’s political and financial bigwigs, gets underway in Davos, Switzerland.
1: A court in India has convicted one person, Sanjay Roy, of the brutal rape of a trainee doctor in Kolkata last year that launched nationwide protests — but the parents of the victim maintain that the crime was committed by a group, not a single man. Despite Indian police claiming before the court that the rape was “rarest of rare” incidents, the most recent data available in India shows 31,516 reports of rape in 2022, a fraction of the true number of assaults as many are not reported.
A reward poster for information leading to the arrest of the suspect is seen on the Upper West Side, Manhattan.
Hard Numbers: Police ID Thompson murder suspect, A Ghanaian comeback, DRC’s deadly mystery, Trump gets big crypto boost
60,000: “The net is tightening,” NYC Mayor Eric Adams said this weekend about the search for UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson’s suspected murderer. New images of the suspect have been released, and Adams says authorities have identified the man but are withholding his name. Meanwhile, the Big Apple’s police department is offering a $10,000 reward, and the FBI is offering $50,000, for information leading to an arrest.
53: Donald Trump isn’t the only comeback kid this year. Ghana’s former President John Dramani Mahama will also return to power following Sunday’s presidential election. Mahama blamed his rival, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, for policies that have left Ghana in an economic crisis. Bawumia conceded after provisional results showed Mahama securing over 53% of the vote, compared to his 45.16%.
80: Viral or bacterial? Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo still aren’t sure, but they do know that they’ve seen 376 cases of a flu-like syndrome that has killed nearly 80 people. Children with pre-existing health conditions appear to be more vulnerable to it. Epidemiologists are being sent to investigate the situation.
30,000,000: Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun — the guy who bought that pricey banana art and ate it — has invested a whopping $30 million in President-elect Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial. The investment makes Sun, who is notably being sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly defrauding investors, its largest investor. Trump’s company only launched in October, and it had been struggling — but Sun’s investment means it could soon profit more than $15 million.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman sign a joint declaration on migrants in Paris.
Hard Numbers: UK-France migration deal, Amazon layoffs, Gabon's carbon credit mega-sale, North Korean crypto windfall, Lake's loss
8 million: The UK will pay France 8 million pounds ($9.4 million) more per year to beef up patrols to stop migrants on small boats from crossing the English Channel to reach British shores. London and Paris have long tussled over how to combat the human-trafficking gangs that control the route, while tens of thousands of asylum-seekers wait years to get their applications processed.
10,000: Following earlier mass layoffs at Twitter and Meta, now Amazon reportedly plans to cut up to 10,000 workers, the largest job cut in the tech giant's history. The news came out on the same day that Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos announced he'll give most of his immense fortune to charity.
90 million: Not everything is doom and gloom at COP27. In the coming weeks, the densely forested West African nation of Gabon plans to sell a whopping 90 million carbon credits, roughly the same amount issued globally in 2021. If oil-rich Gabon makes a killing from its sale, perhaps other developing countries might follow its example of pursuing sustainable growth over fossil fuels.
1 billion: North Korean hackers are estimated to have swiped roughly $1 billion from crypto exchanges in the first three quarters of the year. Where did the money go? No surprise: to fund Kim Jong Un's ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
0.8: Almost a week after the US midterm elections, MAGA icon Kari Lake lost the Arizona gubernatorial race to her Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs. Lake — part of a slate of Trump-backed election deniers running this year — did not immediately concede despite trailing Hobbs by an insurmountable 0.8% of the vote in a battleground state for 2024.
This was featured in Signal, the daily politics newsletter of GZERO Media. For smart coverage of global affairs that normal people can understand, subscribe here.
Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.
Hard Numbers: Crypto upgrade, Angolan inauguration, Iran’s SCO bid, soaring US mortgage rates, enthusiasm for omicron boosters
99: Ethereum, the world's no. 2 cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, successfully completed a long-awaited software upgrade that will reduce carbon emissions linked to its mining by 99%. Crypto fans hope “the merge” will help get environmentalists off their backs and end the crypto price slump they’ve suffered since May.
2: Following an unusually competitive election, João Lourenço was inaugurated on Thursday for his second term as Angola’s president. What should we expect? Protests from the opposition, which contested the result as rigged.
9: Iran just inched a step closer to becoming the ninth member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization by signing a memo to join the Central Asian security bloc. Increasingly isolated on the global stage, Tehran needs all the friends it can get — it also recently applied to join BRICS.
6: Thirty-year fixed mortgages, the most common home loan in America, surpassed 6% for the first time since 2008, double what it was nine months ago. This comes as the consumer price index released this week showed the cost of housing remains stubbornly high despite rising interest rates.
72: Around 72% of Americans say they would get a new COVID booster shot, the first vaccine developed to match developing Omicron variants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, this comes amid growing criticism that the public awareness campaign around the new shots has been sluggish.
Crypto fans ignore its ups and downs
In the past few weeks, the value of cryptocurrencies has been slashed by half over fear, uncertainty, and doubt (aka FUD) of US interest rate hikes and new regulation.
That means NYC Mayor Eric Adams, NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and basketball star Klay Thompson all face pay cuts because they get their salaries in crypto.
Yet, the crypto bros out there have not lost faith.
El Salvador’s crypto-loving President Nayib Bukele is still going strong, ignoring calls by the IMF to stop using bitcoin as legal tender.
What's the big deal about bitcoin anyway?
Critics say it's a Ponzi scheme for criminals. The online black market does take bitcoin, which is also the go-to payment scheme in rug-pull scams.
But crypto fans insist that the tech is anonymous, secure, and unhackable. Not to mention cutting out the middleman: untrustworthy banks.
In fact, crypto has already gone so mainstream that Goldman Sachs predicts it'll compete with gold, and JP says that blockchain will be the backbone of Web 3.0 — a new, more decentralized internet.
The flip side: it could also go to zero.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Does China's rise have to mean America's decline?
Do cryptocurrencies undermine US sanctions?
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
Do cryptocurrencies make it harder to enforce foreign policy sanctions?
Well, that is exactly what the Biden administration worries about. As part of growing concerns of whether unregulated currencies undermine a whole host of policies, sanctions and foreign or trade policy should be a priority area. And just like others who wish to evade tracing of their wealth or transactions, the very states or their sanctioned entities should be assumed to resort to all options to evade restrictions while continuing to do business. So having cryptocurrencies undermining the ability to enforce strategic goals logically raises eyebrows in Washington.
Didn't the Biden administration recently sanction a cryptocurrency exchange itself?
Yes, it did. But the sanctions against SUEX were intended to prevent the company or platform from being the clearing house for criminal money. My sense is that there will be plenty more legal updates, regulations and ad hoc steps to ensure that cryptocurrencies do not undermine the ability to make policy, whether it's monetary or foreign policy.
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Is a Huawei ban possible in Brazil? Poly Network cryptocurrency heist
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
The US warned Brazil about China's Huawei equipment in its 5G telecoms network. Would it be possible to ban Huawei in Brazil?
Now in theory, yes, but in practice, that will be very difficult. If not Huawei, the Brazilian mobile network infrastructure is largely sourced from China, and China is the country's most important trade partner overall. But as always, much depends on political leadership. President Bolsonaro, after all, did go along with President Trump in opposing Huawei while he was facing pushback for that decision at home. So the lesson to learn is that it is easier to prevent risky 5G telecoms equipment to come into the country than to cure when it's already there.
$600 million was stolen in what is being called the largest hack in decentralized finance history. What does this reveal about the security of digital assets?
Now, the answer is kind of in the question. The security is not hacker proof, at least not when it comes to the token swapping platform, Poly Network. But even if around half of the stolen assets have now been returned, the theft is still the largest robbery of its kind, and the hacker stole funds in 12 different cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin's volatility may dim its appeal; China's crypto crackdown
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
Should Bitcoin enthusiasts be alarmed at its plunging value?
Well, I can only imagine it makes them a little less enthusiastic, although the value of Bitcoin is still a lot higher than it was a year ago. So I guess the level of concern much depends on when the enthusiasts started to invest in this volatile currency, which is also seeing more and more regulations coming its way. So if people choose to get out now, it further pushes down the value and so on. I'll be watching what happens next.
Why is China cracking down on cryptocurrency trading?
Well, the Chinese government, not unlike central banks and regulators in other parts of the world, is concerned about the monetary policy effects of massive value creation without oversight. So after a period of a hands-off, watch-and-see approach all over the world, calls for regulation or the creation of digital currencies that are tied to central banks are now taking up. The Basel Committee lamented the creation of walled gardens and big tech for working against the public interest and said Bitcoin in particular has few redeeming public interest attributes when also considering its wasteful energy footprint. So regulation of Bitcoin is coming from different angles and there is no escaping it.