News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Court order makes Discord add temporary child protections in Texas
The platform must change several default settings for Texas users. AUSTIN, Texas - The popular online messaging platform Discord is now temporarily required to add child protection features in Texas following a court decision. Discord restraining order The latest: The temporary restraining order (TRO) against Discord was secured after Texas AG Ken Paxton's office filed a lawsuit alleging "weak" safety settings and children being exposed to online predators. The new court order, announced by the AG's office on Friday, requires Discord to mmediately reconfigure four key default settings to their most protective state for all Texas accounts: * Blocking sensitive content rather than merely blurring it; * Disabling friend requests from "Everyone;" * Turning off direct-message social permissions; * And setting spam filtering to "Filter All." Discord is also required to change their language claiming safety, as well as suspend the automatic 90-day expiration of user violation records and preserve all enforcement and moderation data. It must also file a verified report within fourteen days disclosing its true default settings, the percentage of its workforce devoted to safety, and data on how easily banned users return. What's next: A hearing on the State's request for a temporary injunction is set for June 5, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. in Collin County District Court. What they're saying: "Discord designed a predator's paradise, switched off the safeguards by default, and looked Texas parents in the eye and called it safe. That is not negligence. That is evil dressed up as a safety policy," said Paxton in his Friday release. "A court ordered Discord to stop, and I will pursue this company with the full and unrelenting force of the law until every child in Texas is protected from the sick predators it invited in. Discord was warned again and again and did nothing. It will not get to ignore Texas." Texas vs Discord The backstory: Paxton's office filed the suit on Friday, May 22, following his office's investigation into the platform for "extremist" content after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. What they're saying: "Discord has allowed and invited all kinds of nihilistic violence and evil. My office is taking action to protect our nation's precious children from predators," said Paxton when announcing the litigation. "We live in a time where the dangers children face online have never been greater, and every parent in Texas deserves to know their child is protected." Paxton cited cases in which teens were allegedly assaulted or traumatized as a result of using the platform.
Google engineer charged in alleged $1.2mn Polymarket insider trading scheme
Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Betting on Polymarket is supposed to be a fun, low-intensity gamble whereby you buy 'yes' or 'no' shares for the outcome of a real-world event and hope to correctly predict how it resolves -- at which point your winning share pays out $1 and your losing one pays nothing. That is, unless you are an employee at Google and federal prosecutors allege you already know the answers -- in which case it could amount to insider trading, one of the most aggressively prosecuted white-collar offences on the books that can carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. According to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michele Spagnuolo, a staff software engineer at Google, allegedly used his employer's most confidential annual trend data compilation to pocket more than $1.2 million (€1.1mn) on Polymarket. His alias was known as "AlphaRaccoon." Spagnuolo has now been charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering by federal prosecutors in New York. The Spagnuolo case is the second high-profile prosecution for insider trading on a prediction market in just over a month, part of a largely unexplored legal frontier as prosecutors grapple with how existing fraud and commodities law applies to platforms like Polymarket, which operate nothing like a traditional stock exchange. How Google's 'Year in Search' became a trading tip Every December, Google publishes its "Year in Search" -- a splashy, carefully choreographed reveal of the year's top trending searches. It drives traffic, generates significant media coverage and, as the filing notes, serves as a "high-profile vehicle" through which Google demonstrates its reach to advertisers. The whole point, commercially speaking, is the surprise. Google guards the underlying data closely and even internally, access is restricted to a limited number of employees. Spagnuolo, who has worked at Google since around 2014, allegedly had access to an internal software tool bearing a banner reading "Google Confidential" that gave him sight of the Year in Search results before anyone outside the company did. Enter AlphaRaccoon On the prediction market platform Polymarket, users can bet on the outcome of real-world events such as elections, sports results, and cultural moments using cryptocurrency. In October 2025, Polymarket began offering markets on who would be Google's most-searched person of the year. Around the same time, a Polymarket account called "AlphaRaccoon" started placing bets. Between October and December 2025, FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz alleges, Spagnuolo accessed Google's confidential Year in Search data and then, sometimes within hours, placed wagers on Polymarket that reflected exactly what he had seen. On or about 15 October 2025, Spagnuolo allegedly accessed the internal tool. The following day, the AlphaRaccoon account wagered approximately $403 (€373) on Kendrick Lamar being the number one searched person of 2025 at the implied odds of just 3% and roughly $10,807 (€10,022) against Pope Leo XIV taking the top spot. He allegedly knew this, according to prosecutors, because the internal data already told him so. Betting against the crowd What makes the alleged scheme particularly striking is how it worked in practice. Because Spagnuolo allegedly knew who would not top the rankings, he could bet heavily against the crowd's favourites and collected winnings when popular picks failed to materialise. The AlphaRaccoon account wagered approximately $937,688 (€869,083) on the "no" side of the question of whether Bianca Censori would be the number one searched person at a time when the market put her odds at around 85%. It bet roughly $613,587 (€568,628) against Pope Leo XIV at 56% implied probability, and approximately $509,149 (€471,741) against Donald Trump at around 90%. In total, across roughly 25 bets on Year in Search outcomes, AlphaRaccoon risked approximately $2.75mn (€2.55mn). When Google published its results on 4 December 2025, confirming its global top five trending people as d4vd, Kendrick Lamar, Jimmy Kimmel, Tyler Robinson and Pope Leo XIV, the account walked away with approximately $1.2mn (€1.11m) in profit. The cover-up Once the markets resolved, roughly $3.9mn (€3.6mn) in USDC.e -- a cryptocurrency tied to the value of the US dollar -- was released to the AlphaRaccoon account. On 10 December, the account transferred approximately $5mn (€4.6mn) to a linked cryptocurrency wallet. Polymarket used USDC.e as its main payment currency for trading and settlements on the Polygon blockchain network. From there, according to the complaint, the funds passed through at least two cryptocurrency swaps before being moved into a service that prosecutors say was designed to make the transactions harder to trace. Meanwhile, online communities on Discord and X had already begun speculating that AlphaRaccoon was a Google insider. Shortly afterwards, the username was quietly removed from the account, reverting it to an anonymous alphanumeric string. The FBI traced the wallet anyway. Prosecutors allege cryptocurrency records linked the AlphaRaccoon account to a wallet that had sent approximately $149,980 (€138,916) to a payment processor account registered in the name of Michele Spagnuolo using an Italian government identification card. The charges Spagnuolo faces three charges. The first is commodities fraud, based on allegations that he used material nonpublic information to execute trades on Polymarket, which prosecutors are treating as a platform offering commodity-linked contracts. The second is wire fraud, relating to the alleged misuse of Google's confidential commercial information for personal gain. The third is money laundering, tied to prosecutors' claims that he took steps after December 2025 to conceal the source and ownership of the proceeds. The complaint was sworn before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in the Southern District of New York. The case follows that of US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was charged in April with allegedly using classified information about a US military operation targeting Nicolás Maduro to place winning bets on Polymarket. Prosecutors say Van Dyke turned roughly $33,000 in wagers into more than $400,000 in profit. He has pleaded not guilty.
Google engineer charged with using inside information to win $1.2M on Polymarket
A software engineer at Google unlawfully used confidential company information to make a series of bets that won him about $1.2 million on the online prediction market Polymarket, the Justice Department alleged in a criminal complaint Wednesday. Software engineer Michele Spagnuolo used internal data about search activity to place roughly $2.7 million in bets on which public figures would be announced as among the most searched for in 2025, according to the federal complaint. The 36-year-old Italian citizen used an account called AlphaRaccoon to place bets late last year on whether and how figures including singer D4vd and Pope Leo XIV would appear in rankings released by Google in its Year in Search report last December, according to the complaint and a Justice Department news release. "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data," the complaint alleged. Spagnuolo, a resident of Switzerland, appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge in New York on Wednesday, the Justice Department said. He was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. The case appears to be the second time the Justice Department has charged a prediction market user with a form of insider trading. In April, a Special Forces soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was charged with using classified information about the operation to win roughly $400,000 through a series of bets of Polymarket. Polymarket and its rival prediction market platform Kalshi have soared in popularity over the past two years as the start-ups have won over users willing to bet money against each other on stock trading-style markets for events including federal elections, government actions, sports and celebrity marriages. The platforms have also attracted scrutiny from Congress over the incentives they might create for people in business or public office to use their influence or inside information to tilt the odds of prediction market wagers. Senators voted last month to unanimously to ban themselves from participating in prediction markets. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement released Wednesday that the charges against Spagnuolo showed that cheating on prediction markets would not be tolerated. "Today's charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets," he said. "As alleged, Spagnuolo violated the duties he owed to his employer and used Google's confidential business information to make more than $1.2 million in trading profits on Polymarket. Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted." Spagnuolo used an internal software tool with a banner that read "Google Confidential" in red text to access search data before the company publicly released its annual report on search trends, according to the complaint. Using his AlphaRaccoon account Spagnuolo placed bets on Google's Year in Search data between October and December last year, according to the complaint. He removed the name from the account after his streak of successful wagers led other Polymarket users to speculate on Discord and X that the account belonged to a Google insider, the complaint said. Polymarket deputy chief legal officer Olivia Chalos said in a statement that the company worked closely with the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets. "We are committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets as well as enforcing our rules and working with our regulators and law enforcement," the statement said. Polymarket also posted a statement on its X account Wednesday that appeared to credit an internal team at the company with first identifying the allegedly fraudulent behavior. "Proud to announce Polymarket's market integrity infrastructure flagged another trader who was arrested this morning in New York for insider trading," it said. "With 2 out of 2 arrests in this industry resulting from our criminal referrals, Polymarket has emerged as the enforcement leader," the statement said, apparently referring to the earlier charges against the Special Forces soldier.
Google engineer charged over $1.2mn Polymarket bets
A Google engineer has been arrested for allegedly using his employer's secret search trend data to win $1.2mn on Polymarket as landmark case tests whether prediction markets are subject to the same rules as Wall Street. Betting on Polymarket is supposed to be a fun, low-intensity gamble whereby you buy 'yes' or 'no' shares for the outcome of a real-world event and hope to correctly predict how it resolves -- at which point your winning share pays out $1 and your losing one pays nothing. That is, unless you are an employee at Google and federal prosecutors allege you already know the answers -- in which case it could amount to insider trading, one of the most aggressively prosecuted white-collar offences on the books that can carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. According to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michele Spagnuolo, a staff software engineer at Google, allegedly used his employer's most confidential annual trend data compilation to pocket more than $1.2 million (€1.1mn) on Polymarket. His alias was known as "AlphaRaccoon." Spagnuolo has now been charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering by federal prosecutors in New York. The Spagnuolo case is the second high-profile prosecution for insider trading on a prediction market in just over a month, part of a largely unexplored legal frontier as prosecutors grapple with how existing fraud and commodities law applies to platforms like Polymarket, which operate nothing like a traditional stock exchange. How Google's 'Year in Search' became a trading tip Every December, Google publishes its "Year in Search" -- a splashy, carefully choreographed reveal of the year's top trending searches. It drives traffic, generates significant media coverage and, as the filing notes, serves as a "high-profile vehicle" through which Google demonstrates its reach to advertisers. The whole point, commercially speaking, is the surprise. Google guards the underlying data closely and even internally, access is restricted to a limited number of employees. Spagnuolo, who has worked at Google since around 2014, allegedly had access to an internal software tool bearing a banner reading "Google Confidential" that gave him sight of the Year in Search results before anyone outside the company did. Enter AlphaRaccoon On the prediction market platform Polymarket, users can bet on the outcome of real-world events such as elections, sports results, and cultural moments using cryptocurrency. In October 2025, Polymarket began offering markets on who would be Google's most-searched person of the year. Around the same time, a Polymarket account called "AlphaRaccoon" started placing bets. Between October and December 2025, FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz alleges, Spagnuolo accessed Google's confidential Year in Search data and then, sometimes within hours, placed wagers on Polymarket that reflected exactly what he had seen. On or about 15 October 2025, Spagnuolo allegedly accessed the internal tool. The following day, the AlphaRaccoon account wagered approximately $403 (€373) on Kendrick Lamar being the number one searched person of 2025 at the implied odds of just 3% and roughly $10,807 (€10,022) against Pope Leo XIV taking the top spot. He allegedly knew this, according to prosecutors, because the internal data already told him so. Betting against the crowd What makes the alleged scheme particularly striking is how it worked in practice. Because Spagnuolo allegedly knew who would not top the rankings, he could bet heavily against the crowd's favourites and collected winnings when popular picks failed to materialise. The AlphaRaccoon account wagered approximately $937,688 (€869,083) on the "no" side of the question of whether Bianca Censori would be the number one searched person at a time when the market put her odds at around 85%. It bet roughly $613,587 (€568,628) against Pope Leo XIV at 56% implied probability, and approximately $509,149 (€471,741) against Donald Trump at around 90%. In total, across roughly 25 bets on Year in Search outcomes, AlphaRaccoon risked approximately $2.75mn (€2.55mn). When Google published its results on 4 December 2025, confirming its global top five trending people as d4vd, Kendrick Lamar, Jimmy Kimmel, Tyler Robinson and Pope Leo XIV, the account walked away with approximately $1.2mn (€1.11m) in profit. The cover-up Once the markets resolved, roughly $3.9mn (€3.6mn) in USDC.e -- a cryptocurrency tied to the value of the US dollar -- was released to the AlphaRaccoon account. On 10 December, the account transferred approximately $5mn (€4.6mn) to a linked cryptocurrency wallet. Polymarket used USDC.e as its main payment currency for trading and settlements on the Polygon blockchain network. From there, according to the complaint, the funds passed through at least two cryptocurrency swaps before being moved into a service that prosecutors say was designed to make the transactions harder to trace. Meanwhile, online communities on Discord and X had already begun speculating that AlphaRaccoon was a Google insider. Shortly afterwards, the username was quietly removed from the account, reverting it to an anonymous alphanumeric string. The FBI traced the wallet anyway. Prosecutors allege cryptocurrency records linked the AlphaRaccoon account to a wallet that had sent approximately $149,980 (€138,916) to a payment processor account registered in the name of Michele Spagnuolo using an Italian government identification card. The charges Spagnuolo faces three charges. The first is commodities fraud, based on allegations that he used material nonpublic information to execute trades on Polymarket, which prosecutors are treating as a platform offering commodity-linked contracts. The second is wire fraud, relating to the alleged misuse of Google's confidential commercial information for personal gain. The third is money laundering, tied to prosecutors' claims that he took steps after December 2025 to conceal the source and ownership of the proceeds. The complaint was sworn before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in the Southern District of New York. The case follows that of US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was charged in April with allegedly using classified information about a US military operation targeting Nicolás Maduro to place winning bets on Polymarket. Prosecutors say Van Dyke turned roughly $33,000 in wagers into more than $400,000 in profit. He has pleaded not guilty.
Google engineer charged with insider trading on Polymarket
By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here A Google software engineer was charged with insider trading on Polymarket, where he allegedly made more than $1 million betting on one of last year's most popular Internet searches. Michele Spagnuolo was charged in a complaint unsealed Wednesday in federal court in New York. Spagnuolo, 36, appeared before a federal magistrate and was released on a $2.25 million bond. Mike Ferrara, a lawyer for Spagnuolo, declined to comment on the charges. The case comes amid growing concern about insider trading on prediction markets. The charges against Spagnuolo come just a little more than a month after a U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant was charged with using classified information about the operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to make $400,000 betting on Polymarket. According to the complaint, Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen who joined Alphabet Inc.'s Google in 2014, had access to company data that tracked user searches when he bet that Google's most-searched person in 2025 would be the singer D4vd. Last month, D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, was charged with murdering a 14-year-old girl. He has pleaded not guilty. At the time, Polymarket assigned a "near-zero probability" that D4vd would be the top-ranked search over figures like Pope Leo XIV and Kendrick Lamar, prosecutors said. When D4vd was publicly announced as the top-searched person in December, Spagnuolo allegedly made around $1.2 million. "We're working with law enforcement on their investigation," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies. We've placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action." Prosecutors said Spagnuolo, who traded on Polymarket under the username "AlphaRaccoon," also sought to cover up his bets with a service that adds privacy protection to cryptocurrency transactions, according to the complaint. His account vanished from the market after users on X and Discord speculated that it had been used by a Google insider to trade ahead of the search results announcement, prosecutors said. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, the Army sergeant charged with insider trading on the Maduro ouster, has pleaded not guilty. Polymarket has said it is bolstering efforts against insider trading as the company aims to expand its U.S. presence. In March, the company updated its rules to clarify that certain kinds of wagers are prohibited, such as acting on stolen confidential information or betting if customers are in a position to influence the outcome of an event. Polymarket is partnering with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis Inc. on insider-trading detection tools. The firm is also working with Palantir and TWG AI to identify and report suspicious activity on sports wagers on its U.S. exchange. Polymarket worked with authorities on the case of Van Dyke and said they flagged another trader who was arrested on Wednesday in New York. "With 2 out of 2 arrests in this industry resulting from our criminal referrals, Polymarket has emerged as the enforcement leader," the company said in a post on X. Polymarket's main business operates offshore, outside the oversight of U.S. regulators, and it sometimes allows customers to register without identity checks. While Polymarket's terms of service bar U.S. customers, traders have spoken publicly about circumventing the company's restrictions by using a virtual private network. The case is is U.S. v. Spagnuolo, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. (With assistance from Ava Benny-Morrison, Nathaniel Popper and Denitsa Tsekova.)
Texas AG Sues Discord For Deceiving Parents, Endangering Children
Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against communications app Discord, alleging that the platform allows child predators to exploit children while falsely claiming child safety to parents. "Discord presents itself to the world as a platform built on community, connection, and safety. It is not," the lawsuit, filed on May 22 in the District Court of Collin County, Texas, said. "Behind the safety pages and transparency pages, Discord built and maintains one of the internet's most efficient hunting grounds for manipulation, grooming, and predatory behavior towards children. Discord did so knowingly, deliberately, and profitably." The design choices implemented on the communications platform make it easy for bad actors to locate vulnerable users, build trust quickly, and operate away from public view, the complaint said. According to a Discord webpage, safety is at the "core of everything" the company does. In another post, the company claims safety considerations are "fully integrated into our design process." Discord also says that it has a "zero-tolerance policy" against individuals who engage in sexual grooming or exploitation of minors. Such promises made to consumers, parents, and regulators were false, the lawsuit alleges. Discord makes safety an "opt-in rather than default," the complaint states. "It chose to leave private servers invisible. It chose to staff its most critical safety function with unpaid volunteers. It chose to expire violations after 90 days. It chose to bury the block button. Discord chose profits and growth over the safety of children," it states. A 45-year-old can create a Discord account as a 13-year-old, and the platform has no reliable mechanism to detect or prevent such actions, according to the lawsuit. While Discord allows channels to be age-restricted if a moderator wishes, this protection depends entirely on the self-reported birthdate entered when a user creates an account. The platform basically created an age-verification system "that a child can defeat in seconds," the complaint said. The lawsuit highlights multiple cases of minors being harmed by predators on Discord, including a 13-year-old boy who committed suicide in 2022 after being targeted by the 764 extremist network on the platform. In another case, a 15-year-old boy committed suicide after he was groomed by a predator on Discord and Roblox to send sexually explicit images and videos, according to the lawsuit. The complaint noted that Discord has made it into the "Dirty Dozen" list set up by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation for five straight years. "Sexual abusers return to Discord again and again, thanks to this company's reputation for lax rule enforcement and dangerous design," the center said. "Even registered sex offenders have been charged for targeting kids on Discord." The lawsuit asks the court to declare Discord's actions as "unlawful, deceptive, misleading, and unfair" and order the company to implement age verification requirements. In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Discord spokesperson said the lawsuit's "characterization of Discord does not reflect the platform we have built or the investments we have made in user safety." According to the spokesperson, unlike social media platforms, Discord does not have any algorithmic feeds, infinite scroll, or public "likes" that push content to mass audiences. "Our safety systems combine advanced technology and human-led investigations, alongside user reports to help identify accounts or spaces engaged in harmful activity, including sharing exploitative and child sexual abuse materials," the spokesperson said. "We provide teen users and their parents and guardians with important privacy and safety tools, including Teen Safety Assist and our Family Center. We look forward to collaborating with policymakers in working toward a safer online experience for all users on Discord and across the internet." On Feb. 9, Discord announced it planned to roll out teen safety features globally to ensure a "safer and more inclusive experience" for users aged 13 and older. This involves an "age assurance process" in which users must submit identification or agree to use facial age estimation technology. However, only in a minority of cases will age assurance be required, according to Discord. As part of the update, users will have "teen-appropriate experience, with updated communication settings, restricted access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering that preserves the privacy and meaningful connections that define Discord," the company said. The updates were scheduled to take effect in March. But on Feb. 24, Discord said that the rollout had been extended to the second half of this year. Meanwhile, Discord was one of the companies targeted by a recent letter from Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, who asked the platform to comply with the Take It Down Act by May 19. The Act requires platforms to set up a process that enables individuals, including children, to request the removal of intimate photos or videos shared without their consent. Platforms must make it easy for victims to submit such removal requests. The FTC warned that it would "vigorously" enforce the Act, with each violation potentially resulting in civil penalties of $53,088.
Doj Charges Google Staffer Over Polymarket Trades Netting $1.2 Million
A Google package technologist has been charged pinch utilizing confidential institution accusation to make $1.2 cardinal connected Polymarket, successful the 2nd known national criminal lawsuit connected to lucrative trades connected a prediction marketplace site. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian national who lives successful Switzerland, was arrested connected Wednesday and charged pinch commodities fraud, ligament fraud, money laundering and different counts for allegedly placing bets connected hunt trends based connected soul Google information that tracked personification searches. "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the result of these wagers earlier the trading nationalist did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable soul data," according to the federal indictment, which authorities unsealed connected Wednesday. Prosecutors opportunity Spagnuolo, operating nether the username AlphaRaccoon, placed a wager that Google's most-searched personification successful 2025 would beryllium the rapper known arsenic D4vd, conscionable erstwhile about Polymarket traders "assigned near-zero probability" to the singer, who has been charged pinch murder, being the No. 1 most-Googled personification past year. The charging documents opportunity erstwhile Spagnuolo transferred his winnings retired of his cryptocurrency wallet, he removed the sanction AlphaRaccoon from his Polymarket account. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought a abstracted civilian lawsuit against Spagnuolo for allegedly violating commodities law. Spagnuolo did not return a petition for comment. Google said successful a connection that the institution cooperated successful the national government's investigation into Spagnuolo, who has been placed connected leave. "The worker accessed our trading worldly utilizing a instrumentality disposable to each employees, but utilizing specified confidential accusation to spot bets is simply a superior breach of our policies," said Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez. While the laws that use to the prediction marketplace manufacture are little strict than banal marketplace rules, what's commonly understood arsenic "insider trading," aliases abusing non-public confidential accusation for profit, is forbidden nether national law. But successful prediction marketplace forums connected messaging sites specified arsenic Discord, users scour markets for large, different trades and promote others to travel those bets pinch their ain wagers. "AlphaRaccoon has alpha," said 1 personification connected Discord, utilizing the slang term for immoderate accusation that gives you an separator connected prediction markets, pointing to Spagnuolo's ample bets connected the most-Googled personification of the twelvemonth earlier Google had released it. "Check AlphaRaccoon account" said different personification erstwhile asked really they should stake connected the market. Prediction markets sites specified arsenic Kalshi and Polymarket person erupted successful fame successful President Trump's 2nd term, allowing anyone to stake connected institution announcements, geopolitical events, the result of creation auctions, elections and a seemingly endless array of different topics. And arsenic much and much group activity profits successful each facet of modern life, online sleuths person progressively identified wagers that look excessively bully to beryllium true, suspiciously assured long-shot bets that person netted prediction marketplace traders six- aliases seven-figure profits. In 1 specified lawsuit past month, a maestro sergeant pinch the U.S. Army Special Forces was charged pinch using classified information about the seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to rake successful much than $400,000 connected Polymarket. The Spagnuolo indictment was unsealed a time aft President Trump vowed connected Truth Social to let the prediction marketplace manufacture to "thrive" by asserting national regulators' "exclusive authority" complete the arguable betting sites. For months, management officials person been fighting authorities officials successful tribunal complete who should constabulary the prediction marketplace industry. State officials opportunity the platforms are fundamentally gambling operations and should beryllium taxable to authorities gambling rules, whereas the Trump management views Polymarket and Kalshi arsenic offering a type of "futures contract" that falls nether the umbrella of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has historically overseen markets connected things for illustration atom futures, crude lipid and precious metals. Polymarket's about celebrated platform, which is based successful Panama, is technically inaccessible to American users. It was forced to unopen down its U.S. cognition in 2022 arsenic portion of a colony pinch national regulators who said the tract was operating without a trading speech license. Two years later, the FBI raided the flat of the company's founder, Shayne Coplan, arsenic portion of a probe into whether Polymarket was violating that agreement. The Trump management dropped that investigation. Trump officials moreover invited Coplan to the White House for a acme connected cryptocurrency. The president's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to Polymarket and Kalshi, and a partner successful 1789 Capital, which is simply a awesome investor successful Polymarket.
DOJ charges Google staffer over Polymarket trades netting $1.2 million
A Google software engineer has been charged with using confidential company information to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, in the second known federal criminal case connected to lucrative trades on a prediction market site. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other counts for allegedly placing bets on search trends based on internal Google data that tracked user searches. "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data," according to the federal indictment, which authorities unsealed on Wednesday. Prosecutors say Spagnuolo, operating under the username AlphaRaccoon, placed a wager that Google's most-searched person in 2025 would be the rapper known as D4vd, just when most Polymarket traders "assigned near-zero probability" to the singer, who has been charged with murder, being the No. 1 most-Googled person last year. The charging documents say once Spagnuolo transferred his winnings out of his cryptocurrency wallet, he removed the name AlphaRaccoon from his Polymarket account. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought a separate civil case against Spagnuolo for allegedly violating commodities law. Spagnuolo did not return a request for comment. Google said in a statement that the company cooperated in the federal government's investigation into Spagnuolo, who has been placed on leave. "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies," said Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez. Olivia Chalos, Polymarket's chief legal officer, said in a statement that it "is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States," adding that, since users on the site use crypto to trade, it is "transparent, traceable and bad actors leave footprints." While the laws that apply to the prediction market industry are less strict than stock market rules, what's commonly understood as "insider trading," or abusing non-public confidential information for profit, is illegal under federal law. But in prediction market forums on messaging sites such as Discord, users scour markets for large, unusual trades and encourage others to follow those bets with their own wagers. "AlphaRaccoon has alpha," said one user on Discord, using the slang term for any information that gives you an edge on prediction markets, pointing to Spagnuolo's large bets on the most-Googled person of the year before Google had released it. "Check AlphaRaccoon account" said another user when asked how they should bet on the market. Prediction markets sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket have erupted in popularity in President Trump's second term, allowing anyone to bet on company announcements, geopolitical events, the outcome of art auctions, elections and a seemingly endless array of other topics. And as more and more people seek profits in every facet of modern life, online sleuths have increasingly identified wagers that appear too good to be true, suspiciously confident long-shot bets that have netted prediction market traders six- or seven-figure profits. In one such instance last month, a master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to rake in more than $400,000 on Polymarket. The Spagnuolo indictment was unsealed a day after President Trump vowed on Truth Social to allow the prediction market industry to "thrive" by asserting federal regulators' "exclusive authority" over the controversial betting sites. For months, administration officials have been fighting state officials in court over who should police the prediction market industry. State officials say the platforms are essentially gambling operations and should be subject to state gambling rules, whereas the Trump administration views Polymarket and Kalshi as offering a type of "futures contract" that falls under the umbrella of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has historically overseen markets on things like grain futures, crude oil and precious metals. Polymarket's most popular platform, which is based in Panama, is technically inaccessible to American users. It was forced to shut down its U.S. operation in 2022 as part of a settlement with federal regulators who said the site was operating without a trading exchange license. Two years later, the FBI raided the apartment of the company's founder, Shayne Coplan, as part of a probe into whether Polymarket was violating that agreement. The Trump administration dropped that investigation. Trump officials even invited Coplan to the White House for a summit on cryptocurrency. The president's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to Polymarket and Kalshi, and a partner in 1789 Capital, which is a major investor in Polymarket.
DOJ charges Google staffer over Polymarket trades netting $1.2 million
Updated May 27, 2026 at 7:03 PM CDT A Google software engineer has been charged with using confidential company information to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, in the second known federal criminal case connected to lucrative trades on a prediction market site. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other counts for allegedly placing bets on search trends based on internal Google data that tracked user searches. "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data," according to the federal indictment, which authorities unsealed on Wednesday. Prosecutors say Spagnuolo, operating under the username AlphaRaccoon, placed a wager that Google's most-searched person in 2025 would be the rapper known as D4vd, just when most Polymarket traders "assigned near-zero probability" to the singer, who has been charged with murder, being the No. 1 most-Googled person last year. The charging documents say once Spagnuolo transferred his winnings out of his cryptocurrency wallet, he removed the name AlphaRaccoon from his Polymarket account. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought a separate civil case against Spagnuolo for allegedly violating commodities law. Spagnuolo did not return a request for comment. Google said in a statement that the company cooperated in the federal government's investigation into Spagnuolo, who has been placed on leave. "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies," said Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez. Olivia Chalos, Polymarket's chief legal officer, said in a statement that it "is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States," adding that, since users on the site use crypto to trade, it is "transparent, traceable and bad actors leave footprints." While the laws that apply to the prediction market industry are less strict than stock market rules, what's commonly understood as "insider trading," or abusing non-public confidential information for profit, is illegal under federal law. But in prediction market forums on messaging sites such as Discord, users scour markets for large, unusual trades and encourage others to follow those bets with their own wagers. "AlphaRaccoon has alpha," said one user on Discord, using the slang term for any information that gives you an edge on prediction markets, pointing to Spagnuolo's large bets on the most-Googled person of the year before Google had released it. "Check AlphaRaccoon account" said another user when asked how they should bet on the market. Prediction markets sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket have erupted in popularity in President Trump's second term, allowing anyone to bet on company announcements, geopolitical events, the outcome of art auctions, elections and a seemingly endless array of other topics. And as more and more people seek profits in every facet of modern life, online sleuths have increasingly identified wagers that appear too good to be true, suspiciously confident long-shot bets that have netted prediction market traders six- or seven-figure profits. In one such instance last month, a master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to rake in more than $400,000 on Polymarket. The Spagnuolo indictment was unsealed a day after President Trump vowed on Truth Social to allow the prediction market industry to "thrive" by asserting federal regulators' "exclusive authority" over the controversial betting sites. For months, administration officials have been fighting state officials in court over who should police the prediction market industry. State officials say the platforms are essentially gambling operations and should be subject to state gambling rules, whereas the Trump administration views Polymarket and Kalshi as offering a type of "futures contract" that falls under the umbrella of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has historically overseen markets on things like grain futures, crude oil and precious metals. Polymarket's most popular platform, which is based in Panama, is technically inaccessible to American users. It was forced to shut down its U.S. operation in 2022 as part of a settlement with federal regulators who said the site was operating without a trading exchange license. Two years later, the FBI raided the apartment of the company's founder, Shayne Coplan, as part of a probe into whether Polymarket was violating that agreement. The Trump administration dropped that investigation. Trump officials even invited Coplan to the White House for a summit on cryptocurrency. The president's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to Polymarket and Kalshi, and a partner in 1789 Capital, which is a major investor in Polymarket.
DOJ charges Google staffer over Polymarket trades netting $1.2 million
A Google software engineer has been charged with using confidential company information to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, in the second known federal criminal case connected to lucrative trades on a prediction market site. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other counts for allegedly placing bets on search trends based on internal Google data that tracked user searches. "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data," according to the federal indictment, which authorities unsealed on Wednesday. Prosecutors say Spagnuolo, operating under the username AlphaRaccoon, placed a wager that Google's most-searched person in 2025 would be the rapper known as D4vd, just when most Polymarket traders "assigned near-zero probability" to the singer, who has been charged with murder, being the No. 1 most-Googled person last year. The charging documents say once Spagnuolo transferred his winnings out of his cryptocurrency wallet, he removed the name AlphaRaccoon from his Polymarket account. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought a separate civil case against Spagnuolo for allegedly violating commodities law. Spagnuolo did not return a request for comment. Google said in a statement that the company cooperated in the federal government's investigation into Spagnuolo, who has been placed on leave. "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies," said Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez. While the laws that apply to the prediction market industry are less strict than stock market rules, what's commonly understood as "insider trading," or abusing non-public confidential information for profit, is illegal under federal law. But in prediction market forums on messaging sites such as Discord, users scour markets for large, unusual trades and encourage others to follow those bets with their own wagers. "AlphaRaccoon has alpha," said one user on Discord, using the slang term for any information that gives you an edge on prediction markets, pointing to Spagnuolo's large bets on the most-Googled person of the year before Google had released it. "Check AlphaRaccoon account" said another user when asked how they should bet on the market. Prediction markets sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket have erupted in popularity in President Trump's second term, allowing anyone to bet on company announcements, geopolitical events, the outcome of art auctions, elections and a seemingly endless array of other topics. And as more and more people seek profits in every facet of modern life, online sleuths have increasingly identified wagers that appear too good to be true, suspiciously confident long-shot bets that have netted prediction market traders six- or seven-figure profits. In one such instance last month, a master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to rake in more than $400,000 on Polymarket. The Spagnuolo indictment was unsealed a day after President Trump vowed on Truth Social to allow the prediction market industry to "thrive" by asserting federal regulators' "exclusive authority" over the controversial betting sites. For months, administration officials have been fighting state officials in court over who should police the prediction market industry. State officials say the platforms are essentially gambling operations and should be subject to state gambling rules, whereas the Trump administration views Polymarket and Kalshi as offering a type of "futures contract" that falls under the umbrella of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has historically overseen markets on things like grain futures, crude oil and precious metals. Polymarket's most popular platform, which is based in Panama, is technically inaccessible to American users. It was forced to shut down its U.S. operation in 2022 as part of a settlement with federal regulators who said the site was operating without a trading exchange license. Two years later, the FBI raided the apartment of the company's founder, Shayne Coplan, as part of a probe into whether Polymarket was violating that agreement. The Trump administration dropped that investigation. Trump officials even invited Coplan to the White House for a summit on cryptocurrency. The president's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to Polymarket and Kalshi, and a partner in 1789 Capital, which is a major investor in Polymarket.
Discord's Quiet Native ARM64 Release Transforms Experience on Snapdragon Windows Laptops
Discord has slipped a native ARM64 build of its desktop client onto its download page without fanfare. The move arrives at a moment when Windows on Arm devices from Qualcomm have gained real traction among professionals and gamers who value long battery life. And the difference feels immediate. Users on Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus machines no longer need to accept the translation tax imposed by Microsoft's Prism emulator. That layer worked. But it carried costs. Startup took longer. CPU usage climbed during voice calls or screen sharing. Battery drained faster than it should on hardware designed for efficiency. The new build sidesteps all of that. Neowin first noted the availability on May 25, 2026. The official Discord download page now presents a clear choice: x64 or ARM64 when selecting the Windows installer. No announcement accompanied the addition. No press release explained the timing. Yet the option sits there, ready for anyone to grab. This marks the end of a wait that stretched nearly two years. About a year earlier, Discord had confirmed development of the native client. The company followed through after watching the Snapdragon X series gain momentum and after Microsoft spent years coaxing developers to compile for ARM64. The result lands at a point when more hardware vendors prepare Snapdragon X2 machines and new Surface models. Performance gains appear across routine tasks. Scrolling through servers feels snappier. Voice channels launch without the slight hesitation that plagued the emulated version. Battery impact drops because the app no longer runs translated instructions. One early tester who used the x86 client on a Snapdragon X Elite device described constant sluggishness and lag before switching to an unofficial client out of frustration. The native option eliminates that pain. MakeUseOf highlighted the practical upgrades. The web version of Discord offered an alternative but sacrificed features. Global hotkeys for push-to-talk refused to work when the browser tab lost focus. Screen sharing behaved unpredictably. Notifications sometimes failed to appear. Game activity status simply did not register. The native ARM64 app restores every capability without compromise. But the story runs deeper than one application. Windows on Arm spent years fighting an uphill battle for app support. Early Surface Pro X devices suffered from spotty compatibility. Emulation improved with Prism, yet many background tools like Discord stayed stuck in x86 form. That created a persistent drag on what should have been class-leading efficiency. Discord's decision signals broader acceptance. Other holdouts now face pressure to follow. Claudia Fellerman, a Discord spokesperson, told The Verge in 2025 that the company had begun work on the ARM64 client. At the time the project remained in early stages. An experimental build already showed promise. One reviewer who installed a Canary preview reported behavior indistinguishable from the Intel version. "There is no lag navigating around and the performance is a lot better," the tester observed. The public stable release has now caught up to those early experiments. Installation remains straightforward. Visit discord.com/download, select Windows, then choose the ARM64 option. The Microsoft Store listing still lacks explicit ARM64 labeling, so the direct download serves as the reliable path. After installation, users may want to clear the existing cache to avoid any residual data from the previous version. The app itself looks and functions exactly as before. Only the underlying architecture has changed. Battery life stands out as the most tangible benefit on laptops. Voice calls that once pushed fans into audible spin now run cooler and quieter. Streaming or screen sharing sessions consume fewer resources. For professionals who keep Discord open all day in the background, the efficiency gain accumulates. Less heat. Longer unplugged sessions. Fewer complaints about sluggishness during meetings. The timing aligns with maturing Windows on Arm hardware. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series delivered strong initial results. Successive generations promise even better performance. Microsoft has expanded native app support across its own products. Developers have responded. Discord joins a growing list that includes major productivity tools and creative applications. The platform no longer feels like an afterthought on Arm machines. Unofficial clients had filled the gap for impatient users. Some offered ARM64 builds ahead of the official release and gained popularity precisely because the emulated Discord felt inadequate. Their existence underscored the demand. Now the official client matches or exceeds those workarounds while delivering full feature parity, security updates, and Nitro benefits without question. Task Manager provides an easy way to verify the change. Switch to the Details tab and examine the Architecture column. Native ARM64 processes display clearly. Microsoft continues to refine this visibility, but the information already helps users confirm they run the optimized version. So what comes next? More apps will likely shed their emulation layer in coming months. The success of Copilot+ PCs and the steady improvement in Prism have created conditions where native development delivers clear returns. Discord's silent rollout sets a quiet precedent. No marketing blitz. Just a better product made available to users who need it. Early reactions on X reflect relief. One user noted the elimination of random lag, reduced CPU spikes, and noticeably better battery during long sessions. Another pointed out that the hardware was never the limitation. The software simply had not caught up. That gap has narrowed. Discord did not comment publicly on the release timing. The company has focused instead on features like improved audio, video, and server tools. Yet this architectural update may matter more to a segment of its user base than any flashy new interface change. For owners of ARM-based Windows laptops, the chat app that once felt like a burden now fades into the background where it belongs. The shift also carries implications for developers watching the platform. When a service as widely used as Discord makes the investment in native ARM64 support, it validates the architecture for broader adoption. Gamers who rely on Discord overlay during play on Snapdragon handhelds or laptops stand to benefit. Professionals who manage multiple voice channels during work calls gain smoother operation. The entire experience moves closer to what users on traditional x86 systems have taken for granted. Expect further refinement. Future updates will likely optimize additional subsystems for ARM64. Yet the foundation now exists. The app runs natively. Performance and efficiency improve as a direct result. And the long wait has ended.
Inside The Murky Market Selling Pre-IPO SpaceX And OpenAI Shares
Ordinary investors can now buy private shares of OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX -- they think they can, anyway. But between them and IPO riches lies an opaque network of shadowy middlemen, each eager to take their cut, some selling nothing but air. the summer of 2020, former Morgan Stanley trader Adam Crawley was wandering through Indonesia, Thailand and Australia, perfecting his qigong with a man called Master YanG, when a cold message on LinkedIn jerked him back to reality. The sender was Noel Moldvai, a crypto enthusiast with a fondness for early-2000s Canadian rock and a pitch about the hottest corner of the private markets. Crawley had no intention of going back into finance, but Moldvai sold him on a market in which access was scarce and demand was feral: pre-IPO shares in the largest and hottest startups on the planet. The ones planning trillion-dollar public offerings: Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI. The kinds of shares almost no retail investor is supposed to be able to buy. The kind everyone wants. In February 2022, the pair founded Austin, Texas-based Augment, a firm built to locate and package those shares for sale to institutional and retail investors who couldn't otherwise buy them. Crawley claims Augment's assets -- almost entirely pre-IPO shares in private tech companies -- have ballooned from under $200 million to more than $1 billion over the last 12 months, driven largely by Anthropic's skyrocketing value. Augment isn't charting a new path here. People have been trading private-company paper since well before Facebook's 2012 IPO. But the AI boom seems to be turning the side door into more of a front entrance. The reason is simple: Hot tech companies are staying private longer and VCs are pocketing much more of the value. Buying Apple at its IPO price and waiting a few decades was once a viable retirement plan. Buying a $1 trillion company at IPO and waiting for it to triple is not. The biggest gains now happen years before the prospectus is filed. One reason: The SEC changed the rules back in 2012. Before then, companies with $10 million in assets or 500 shareholders had to go public (that's partly why Facebook did so); now the limit is 2,000 shareholders. SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are all hoping to go public at valuations of $1 trillion or more, leaving little room for further exponential growth. Enter the special-purpose vehicle, or SPV: a fund built to pool money from many parties into a single asset. Sometimes the asset is the shares. Sometimes it is an interest in another SPV that holds the shares. Sometimes it is an interest in an SPV that holds an interest in a third SPV that holds the shares. Each layer is its own legal entity. And each layer charges fees. The SPV is a regulatory workaround that helps companies stay private longer without disclosing any financials, because hundreds of people can aggregate their shareholding into a single vehicle on the cap table. And, importantly, the SPV marketplace allows for company insiders -- including their billionaire founders -- to cash out secretly without spooking the market. Everyone along the way takes a cut: There are management fees, carried interest and sometimes access or introduction fees. Fueled by FOMO and the fact that private stock can be difficult to transfer, the SPV ecosystem has become a booming toll-road business for the companies and brokers that run it. Sim Desai, CEO of the SPV brokerage Hiive, estimates that SPVs hold "hundreds of billions" in private venture-backed companies. It's a major step toward a worthy goal: democratizing private-company ownership. The more people can share in private markets' gargantuan economic gains, the better. But without consistent rules and active regulators, the market for pre-IPO shares risks turning into a playground for scammers. Everyone is trying to get a piece of the market. That includes 20-something-year-old founders, former lawyers, mid-tier VCs and venerable institutions like Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab, which peddle SPV investments to high-net-worth clients. There are even SPV shills on Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram. On one end, there's a shadow network of individual brokers, some of whom may be unlicensed. On the other, there are "traditional" venture capitalists using SPVs as an investment strategy. Early-stage rounds are getting larger and less accessible to anyone without deep pockets. Later-stage rounds are being sliced into deals where investors can pick the single company they want and pay for the privilege. Billionaire Antonio Gracias' (No. 32 on this year's Midas List) Valor Equity Partners holds an estimated $30 billion in SpaceX shares via single-investment vehicles; investor Alex Davis, owner of Dallas-based investment firm Disruptive, oversees some $10 billion in assets thanks largely to SPVs in companies such as Groq, Palantir and Shield AI. In between are firms like Augment and Hiive, which was last valued at $650 million, projects $120 million in 2026 revenue and says it's profitable. Morgan Stanley bought EquityZen, a New York-based SPV broker, in January. AngelList, which helps people set up and sell SPV interests, is estimated to have pulled about $200 million in fees from SPV formation. Sydecar, a Houston-based SPV administrator, has seen its assets increase from $3.5 billion six months ago to $5.5 billion now. All these firms help fill rounds, run secondary transactions and build the financial plumbing around the high-growth companies that landed America's top VCs on Forbes' 2026 Midas List. "We're blowing through our projections," says Sydecar cofounder and CEO Nik Talreja. He thinks Sydecar could double its assets under administration again to $10 billion in the next 12 months. Individual investors need to be careful. Over the next few years, many of them will learn that "exposure" to a private company through an SPV can be much more expensive than owning the shares outright. Some will have paid compounding fees through stacked vehicles. Others will have paid upfront access fees that range from less than 5% to as much as 18%. Those fees are on top of the typical "2 and 20" (2% of assets, 20% of profits) common in venture capital, though not all SPVs charge management fees. Sydecar says its SPVs take an average of 12% of profits. The math gets ugly fast. Say an investor buys a $2 million slice of a three-layer SPV where each layer takes a 2% management fee and 20% carried interest. If that stake is worth $10 million when the company goes public two years later, nearly $5 million would go to the middlemen. And that's before paying taxes. There is also transfer risk: Private companies, including Anthropic, Anduril and OpenAI, restrict transfers of their stock. That means SPV investors may never own the shares directly, muddying the path to cashing out. Finally, there's fraud and incompetence: SPVs that lied about having access to the shares or ones that were never properly formed. Lawsuits are already wending their way through the system. Expect many more. In some ways, SPVs are the SPACs of 2026: a boom market in access, with enough legitimate promise to attract serious money but where those raising the capital can get an easy score at the expense of the retail investor -- and keep litigators busy later. The resemblance is more than coincidental: A SPAC, or Special Purpose Acquisition Company, is just a subspecies of an SPV. Back at Augment, Crawley and Moldvai started by nabbing $35 million in Anthropic shares -- with the company's approval -- at the 2024 fire-sale auction of now-defunct cryptocurrency platform FTX (Sam Bankman-Fried, the imprisoned cofounder of FTX, was one of Anthropic's earliest investors). They've since used a combination of equity and debt to fund purchases of other in-demand private-company stock, mostly from VC firms, package it into an SPV and sell that to investors, Crawley says. The firm, which he says is profitable, generally charges a 5% transaction fee. Revenue is still modest but rising quickly: $12 million in 2025, a projected $40 million this year and $100 million next year. Crawley sees FTX as the model, which is one of those comparisons that explains more than it intends to. "You have a precedent [in crypto] for bringing liquidity to a private asset," he says. "FTX was winning the strategy before they blew up. . . . FTX figured this out." Of course, FTX also showed what can happen when financial engineering outruns trust. Matt Grimm, who cofounded military drone maker Anduril with Palmer Luckey and three others, painted a darker picture on a recent podcast. "How many investors in America think they own a chunk of SpaceX when they're actually funding their ex-roommate's boyfriend's coke habit in Miami?" April, venture capitalist Jeff Weinstein of New York City-based FJ Labs received a WhatsApp message from a firm he'd never heard of offering to sell him up to $2 billion in Anthropic shares. The price valued Anthropic between $800 billion and $1 trillion, or nearly triple the valuation of the AI firm's then-latest funding round. The deal also came with a 10% upfront fee. When Weinstein asked for more information, the seller told him it was a single-layer SPV -- meaning the vehicle would hold the shares directly. Then came a letter of intent asking him to sign and provide proof of funds by the end of that same day. Anthropic does not allow SPVs to acquire its stock without permission, and the company holds that unauthorized transfers are void. So Weinstein asked for the name of the direct investor and evidence of the allocation in Anthropic's upcoming funding round. He did not get an answer. Unclear about what he was buying, he declined. "What I found most gross about this was the bald-faced lying," says Weinstein, who worries that retail investors who are under time pressure might not give proposals like this the proper scrutiny. The episode illustrates a basic danger: SPV investors cannot usually tell who owns the underlying shares. Ellen Tang, who runs an investing YouTube channel and tried to invest in Groq through a Hiive SPV in November, recalls asking exactly that. "I remember it was something they couldn't reveal," she says. Potential SPV investors should ask a simple question, Weinstein says. "Is the person you're dealing with just trying to intermediate themselves into the transaction and take a cut?" He suspects many are. "Half the people involved in this ecosystem, maybe more than half, are not registered broker-dealers," he says. "This entire grifting process is illegal." The clearest cautionary tale so far is Linqto. Founded in 2010, the Bay Area company grew to manage more than half a billion in private pre-IPO company assets, much of it tied to crypto company Ripple. Linqto marketed something that seemed too good to be true: for as little as $1,000, access to buying shares of more than 100 private companies including SpaceX, Anthropic and Ripple -- with no management fees or carried interest. Meanwhile, Linqto was contending with multiple lawsuits, including a class action against its former CEO, Bill Sarris, and a whistleblower suit from former chief revenue officer Geno Zawrotny, who now works with Crawley at Augment. Linqto is also under investigation by the SEC, DOJ and Finra. Among the allegations against prior management: telling investors they were buying shares directly in pre-IPO companies while selling interests in an SPV that was not properly formed; charging excessive and undisclosed markups of more than 150% while advertising "no hidden fees or costs"; and using paid influencers to create FOMO around supposedly scarce private-company access. Last year, new management came in and quickly realized the business could not continue as it was and put Linqto into bankruptcy protection. It was, says Dan Siciliano, Linqto's new CEO, "a nontransparent picking of the pocket of the customer right from the start." Siciliano stopped trading and moved Linqto's creditors' assets to Charles Schwab-owned secondary trading platform Forge and global asset manager VanEck. In February, a judge approved Linqto's plan to emerge from bankruptcy; that will likely happen in a few weeks. Rainmaker Securities, a Finra-registered broker named alongside Linqto in the class-action lawsuit, remains a major player in SPV markets. Rainmaker rejects all allegations of wrongdoing and plans to file for dismissal. The firm has previously paid Finra fines, without admitting wrongdoing, over allegedly making misleading statements to the public and failing to record evidence of sufficient due diligence. Rainmaker insists it's one of the good guys, emphasizing that it has never had investor complaints on Finra. Says a company spokesperson, "Not all private securities SPV transactions are conducted through regulated broker-dealers [like Rainmaker] and therefore may not be subject to the same compliance, diligence, supervisory or record-keeping standards." Last month, Anthropic published a list of eight SPV brokers it says are not authorized to buy or sell its shares, including major players Hiive and Sydecar, and emphasized that SPVs are not allowed to acquire Anthropic stock. Still, Hiive appears to hold more than a quarter of its SPV assets, worth more than $150 million, in Anthropic shares. Sydecar has registered 44 SPVs with "Anthropic" in the name. "We only facilitate share transfers with company approval," Hiive's Desai wrote on X in response, emphasizing that the company's mission is to "bring transparency and standardization to the private market in order to address precisely the concerns that they raise." Sydecar says that because it is an administrator, it does not buy or sell securities. OpenAI and Anduril also ban secondary transactions without express company approval. Yet these shares do trade: Hiive doesn't have shares in either company in its SPVs but appears to run an active market (it takes up to 6.8% off the top) for trading shares of Anduril and OpenAI. At least half a dozen syndicates on AngelList publicly claim to have access to OpenAI shares. Ahead of its IPO, SpaceX has been kicking SPV investors off its cap table -- including Chinese money that went into the company through a Delaware SPV run by Tomales Bay Capital. This means investors may have put money into vehicles they believed would deliver exposure to these companies, only to find that the companies themselves refuse to recognize the transfers. Maybe the original shareholder sells at IPO and passes the proceeds down the SPV chain. Maybe they don't. Or maybe the company declares the transfer void, investors lose the shares they thought they were buying and the fight moves to Delaware Chancery Court. Some SPV peddlers have already run into legal trouble. In January, three SPV brokers in New York City pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges. They allegedly pocketed millions of dollars in fees -- from hidden markups on SPV shares in pre-IPO companies -- while raising $185 million from more than 1,000 investors. A month prior, the Department of Justice charged a New York man with fraud -- for selling SPV interests in Anduril shares that he did not have access to. In 2023, a federal judge convicted a Manhattan man for using investors' SPV money to buy private jet charters and a Corvette. or now, the SPV bazaar is accepting new entrants from seemingly every zip code. From his office in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Max Avery tells the story of how he got here: childhood computer nerd; arms dealer in Ploiești, Romania; struggling construction entrepreneur; and, finally, purveyor of SPVs. The 40-year-old, who legally changed his name to Maximus Tyrannus Avery after the protagonist in Gladiator, claims he once sold a rare semiautomatic pistol to Elon Musk. Now he is in private markets. Avery runs a crypto wealth-management platform and a 15,000-member Discord community where investors trade notes on SPV opportunities. He has written a book about how anyone can raise or invest in SPVs. He's taking his own advice, raising about $10 million so far. He plans to charge the usual private-market toll: 2% a year and 20% of the profits. The SpaceX IPO set for June will be the first big test for true SPV believers like Avery. If investors in layered SPVs can sell and collect, they will look smart and the market inevitable. But if a thousand lawsuits blossom and middlemen pocket nearly all the profits, there will be howls of outrage and cries for more regulation. Either way, the current patchwork -- where each company invents its own SPV policy, eligibility rules and transfer restrictions, without clear enforcement -- is messy, inconsistent and ripe for abuse. Avery and a chorus of SPV hypesters think tokenizing SPV interests could help by letting investors sell blockchain-backed tokens tied to SPV ownership even when the underlying shares cannot transfer. Some Anthropic-linked crypto tokens are already trading at implied valuations above $1 trillion. It's a buzzy idea, and likely backed by good intentions, but given crypto's fraught history of fraud, theft and essentially nonexistent controls, it will almost undoubtedly make things worse. You don't get sane by adding crazy to crazy. Crypto and tokenization to the rescue? Good grief.
I manage my entire home lab using Telegram and Discord and it's the coolest thing ever
Ask anyone running a home lab, and they'll tell you that it is a constant cycle of excitement around discovering cool new services, and eventually, maintenance fatigue. It starts simply enough with a single service, but before you know it, your Synology NAS is running dozens of Docker containers handling everything from media servers to network-wide ad blockers. The real challenge is not setting these services up; it is keeping them running smoothly without spending every weekend staring at a management console or container logs.
Proton-CachyOS adds low latency layer and Discord rich presence support
Proton-CachyOS version 11.0-20260519 has released bringing support for the new open source low_latency_layer, along with Discord rich presence. Anyone can run their own fork of Valve's Proton as it's open source. Check out the GamingOnLinux Guide to all the different Proton versions. Proton-CachyOS includes a lot of extras on top of Valve's Proton, based on their testing code and various patches (so in some ways it can be more unstable). The main changes for this release include: Source: GitHub To use it you can follow all the same steps as in the GE-Proton guide here on GamingOnLinux, you just pick Proton-CachyOS instead.
