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Popular WoW: Dragonflight Darktide Midnight Suns Holiday gifts Warzone 2. Audio player loading…. PC Gamer Newsletter Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors. Joshua Wolens. See comments. Crypto lawyers have drawn on his prior decisions in the context of the Tornado Cash sanctions, for example.

Faruqui spoke with Protocol about the power of his position, and what people in crypto should understand about the law.

There was another prosecutor, Christopher Brown — you know, the other Chris Brown — and he had taken an interest in this when we were both working on financial crime in the Washington, D.

Our U. attorney at the time, Jessie Liu, had this idea of using financial investigations in a way that was not limited to just white collar crime, or even narcotics cases, but also for cyber investigations, to national security investigations, and in civil cases. A lot of what we were investigating was related to following the money and so she wanted us to be this multidisciplinary unit.

But I have to say, we started with the goal of wanting to make T-shirts, and we never did that while I was there. Your decisions have also gotten a lot of attention. We're public servants! And in order for the public to have faith and trust us, they need to understand what it is that we're doing and what we're saying.

Humor is one way, not using a lot of legalese is another way. But I think there are many judges who are trying to make the judiciary more accessible, and so people can see the work that we're doing and understand what we're doing and then make their own opinions about if it's right or wrong. But at least, if it's understandable, then there's still some trust in the framework even if you don't agree with how our decisions are stated.

We are ambassadors for the judiciary to the people in our courtroom — it's a very frightening proposition being in court if you've been federally charged, and people have perceptions of what they think can happen there in terms of fairness or unfairness.

But then it goes far beyond that. I do a lot of work with the Administrative Office of the Courts, our central body doing civic education and outreach to high schools, because I want college and high school students and law students to have an experience where they get a chance to talk to a judge.

So my goal is certainly not just getting to one segment of the population, but it's making decisions accessible to whoever's interested in reading them. What has it felt like for you switching from that prosecutor role to magistrate judge?

Lawyers are trying to take different frameworks from one topic and apply them to another, and then convince you that that is or is not appropriate. Being a judge is very different because you're evaluating what the parties present to you as the applicable legal frameworks, and deciding how new, groundbreaking technology fits into legal frameworks that were written 10 or 15 years ago.

But that's not really a place where judges get involved in saying how it ought to be regulated. There was, famously, a judge in Florida that said cryptocurrency was not money because you couldn't put it underneath your bed, and that's what money is: something that is tangible. So different people are going to have different decisions. And that's not just true for crypto, but also other areas of the law.

Your best-known crypto decisions strongly assert that crypto is traceable. One way people try to make it less traceable is with mixers, and Tornado Cash was sanctioned by OFAC not too long ago. Do you think the legal reasoning was sound enough for similar sanctions to be applied to other mixers, or decentralized exchanges?

I don't know. I think there's been some discussion that people may litigate some of these things, so I can't comment, because those frequently do come to our courthouse. And I think there are certainly people opining on that, yes and no. So much of what judges do is that we rely on the parties that are before us to tell us what's right and what's wrong. And then, you know, obviously, they'll have different views, and we make a decision based on what people say in front of us.

Are you aware that some legal analysis of the Tornado Cash sanctions references your recent decision in a cryptocurrency sanctions case? That's what good lawyers will always do. Even legislators might look at that as they try to think about where the gaps are. As a prosecutor I had a case where we sued three Chinese banks to give us their bank records, and it had never been done before. Afterwards, Congress passed a new law, using the decisions from judges in this court and the D.

circuit court, the court above us. So I'm sure people look at prior decisions and try to apply them in the ways that they want to.

Are there any misconceptions about how the law applies to crypto, or how your decisions should be interpreted, that you wish you could get across? One misconception is that the judges can't understand this technology — we can.

People have these views in two extremes. The lawyer's fundamental job is to take super complex and technical things and boil them down to very easily digestible arguments for a judge, for a jury, or whoever it might be.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Financial technology is breaking down barriers to financial services and delivering value to consumers, small businesses, and the economy.

Fintech puts American consumers at the center of their finances and helps them manage their money responsibly. From payment apps to budgeting and investing tools and alternative credit options, fintech makes it easier for consumers to pay for their purchases and build better financial habits. Fintech also arms small businesses with the financial tools for success, including low-cost banking services, digital accounting services, and expanded access to capital.

We advocate for modernized financial policies and regulations that allow fintech innovation to drive competition in the economy and expand consumer choice. Spots are still available for this hybrid event, and you can RSVP here to save your seat. Join us as we discuss how to shape the future of finance. In its broadest sense, Open Banking has created a secure and connected ecosystem that has led to an explosion of new and innovative solutions that benefit the customer, rapidly revolutionizing not just the banking industry but the way all companies do business.

Target benefits are delivered through speed, transparency, and security, and their impact can be seen across a diverse range of use cases. Sharing financial data across providers can enable a customer individual or business to have real-time access to multiple bank accounts across multiple institutions all in one platform, saving time and helping consumers get a more accurate picture of their own finances before taking on debt, providing a more reliable indication than most lending guidelines currently do.

Companies can also create carefully refined marketing profiles and therefore, finely tune their services to the specific need. Open Banking platforms like Klarna Kosma also provide a unique opportunity for businesses to overlay additional tools that add real value for users and deepen their customer relationships.

The increased transparency brought about by Open Banking brings a vast array of additional benefits, such as helping fraud detection companies better monitor customer accounts and identify problems much earlier.

The list of new value-add solutions continues to grow. The speed of business has never been faster than it is today. For small business owners, time is at a premium as they are wearing multiple hats every day.

Macroeconomic challenges like inflation and supply chain issues are making successful money and cash flow management even more challenging. This presents a tremendous opportunity that innovation in fintech can solve by speeding up money movement, increasing access to capital, and making it easier to manage business operations in a central place. Fintech offers innovative products and services where outdated practices and processes offer limited options.

For example, fintech is enabling increased access to capital for business owners from diverse and varying backgrounds by leveraging alternative data to evaluate creditworthiness and risk models. This can positively impact all types of business owners, but especially those underserved by traditional financial service models.

When we look across the Intuit QuickBooks platform and the overall fintech ecosystem, we see a variety of innovations fueled by AI and data science that are helping small businesses succeed. By efficiently embedding and connecting financial services like banking, payments, and lending to help small businesses, we can reinvent how SMBs get paid and enable greater access to the vital funds they need at critical points in their journey.

Overall, we see fintech as empowering people who have been left behind by antiquated financial systems, giving them real-time insights, tips, and tools they need to turn their financial dreams into a reality. Innovations in payments and financial technologies have helped transform daily life for millions of people.

People who are unbanked often rely on more expensive alternative financial products AFPs such as payday loans, money orders, and other expensive credit facilities that typically charge higher fees and interest rates, making it more likely that people have to dip into their savings to stay afloat.

A few examples include:. Mobile wallets - The unbanked may not have traditional bank accounts but can have verified mobile wallet accounts for shopping and bill payments. Their mobile wallet identity can be used to open a virtual bank account for secure and convenient online banking.

Minimal to no-fee banking services - Fintech companies typically have much lower acquisition and operating costs than traditional financial institutions. They are then able to pass on these savings in the form of no-fee or no-minimum-balance products to their customers.

This enables immigrants and other populations that may be underbanked to move up the credit lifecycle to get additional forms of credit such as auto, home and education loans, etc. Entrepreneurs from every background, in every part of the world, should be empowered to start and scale global businesses.

Most businesses still face daunting challenges with very basic matters. These are still very manually intensive processes, and they are barriers to entrepreneurship in the form of paperwork, PDFs, faxes, and forms.

Stripe is working to solve these rather mundane and boring challenges, almost always with an application programming interface that simplifies complex processes into a few clicks.

Stripe powers nearly half a million businesses in rural America. The internet economy is just beginning to make a real difference for businesses of all sizes in all kinds of places.

We are excited about this future. The way we make decisions on credit should be fair and inclusive and done in a way that takes into account a greater picture of a person. Lenders can better serve their borrowers with more data and better math. Zest AI has successfully built a compliant, consistent, and equitable AI-automated underwriting technology that lenders can utilize to help make their credit decisions. While artificial intelligence AI systems have been a tool historically used by sophisticated investors to maximize their returns, newer and more advanced AI systems will be the key innovation to democratize access to financial systems in the future.

D espite privacy, ethics, and bias issues that remain to be resolved with AI systems, the good news is that as large r datasets become progressively easier to interconnect, AI and related natural language processing NLP technology innovations are increasingly able to equalize access.

T he even better news is that this democratization is taking multiple forms. AI can be used to provide risk assessments necessary to bank those under-served or denied access. AI systems can also retrieve troves of data not used in traditional credit reports, including personal cash flow, payment applications usage, on-time utility payments, and other data buried within large datasets, to create fair and more accurate risk assessments essential to obtain credit and other financial services. By expanding credit availability to historically underserved communities, AI enables them to gain credit and build wealth.

Additionally, personalized portfolio management will become available to more people with the implementation and advancement of AI. Sophisticated financial advice and routine oversight, typically reserved for traditional investors, will allow individuals, including marginalized and low-income people, to maximize the value of their financial portfolios.

Moreover, when coupled with NLP technologies, even greater democratization can result as inexperienced investors can interact with AI systems in plain English, while providing an easier interface to financial markets than existing execution tools. Open finance technology enables millions of people to use the apps and services that they rely on to manage their financial lives — from overdraft protection, to money management, investing for retirement, or building credit.

More than 8 in 10 Americans are now using digital finance tools powered by open finance. This is because consumers see something they like or want — a new choice, more options, or lower costs. What is open finance? At its core, it is about putting consumers in control of their own data and allowing them to use it to get a better deal. When people can easily switch to another company and bring their financial history with them, that presents real competition to legacy services and forces everyone to improve, with positive results for consumers.

For example, we see the impact this is having on large players being forced to drop overdraft fees or to compete to deliver products consumers want. We see the benefits of open finance first hand at Plaid, as we support thousands of companies, from the biggest fintechs, to startups, to large and small banks.

All are building products that depend on one thing - consumers' ability to securely share their data to use different services. Open finance has supported more inclusive, competitive financial systems for consumers and small businesses in the U. and across the globe — and there is room to do much more.

As an example, the National Consumer Law Consumer recently put out a new report that looked at consumers providing access to their bank account data so their rent payments could inform their mortgage underwriting and help build credit. This is part of the promise of open finance. At Plaid, we believe a consumer should have a right to their own data, and agency over that data, no matter where it sits. This will be essential to securing benefits of open finance for consumers for many years to come.

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times. Donna Goodison dgoodison is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

Both prongs of that are important. But cost-cutting is a reality for many customers given the worldwide economic turmoil, and AWS has seen an increase in customers looking to control their cloud spending.

By the way, they should be doing that all the time. The motivation's just a little bit higher in the current economic situation. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Besides the sheer growth of AWS, what do you think has changed the most while you were at Tableau? Were you surprised by anything?

The number of customers who are now deeply deployed on AWS, deployed in the cloud, in a way that's fundamental to their business and fundamental to their success surprised me.

Forex FX is a portmanteau of foreign currency and exchange. Foreign exchange is the process of changing one currency into another for a variety of reasons, usually for commerce, trading, or tourism.

Trading currencies can be risky and complex. Because there are such large trade flows within the system, it is difficult for rogue traders to influence the price of a currency. This system helps create transparency in the market for investors with access to interbank dealing. Retail investors should spend time learning about the forex market and then researching which forex broker to sign up with, and find out whether it is regulated in the United States or the United Kingdom U.

and U. dealers have more oversight or in a country with more lax rules and oversight. It is also a good idea to find out what kind of account protections are available in case of a market crisis, or if a dealer becomes insolvent. Read on to learn about the forex markets, what it's used for, and how you can get started trading. The foreign exchange market is where currencies are traded. Currencies are important because they allow us to purchase goods and services locally and across borders.

International currencies need to be exchanged to conduct foreign trade and business. If you are living in the United States and want to buy cheese from France, then either you or the company from which you buy the cheese has to pay the French for the cheese in euros EUR.

This means that the U. importer would have to exchange the equivalent value of U. dollars USD for euros. The same goes for traveling. The tourist has to exchange the euros for the local currency, in this case the Egyptian pound, at the current exchange rate.

One unique aspect of this international market is that there is no central marketplace for foreign exchange. Rather, currency trading is conducted electronically over the counter OTC , which means that all transactions occur via computer networks among traders around the world, rather than on one centralized exchange. The market is open 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week, and currencies are traded worldwide in the major financial centers of Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Zurich—across almost every time zone.

This means that when the U. trading day ends, the forex market begins anew in Tokyo and Hong Kong. As such, the forex market can be extremely active anytime, with price quotes changing constantly.

These terms are synonymous and all refer to the forex market. In its most basic sense, the forex market has been around for centuries. People have always exchanged or bartered goods and currencies to purchase goods and services. However, the forex market, as we understand it today, is a relatively modern invention. After the Bretton Woods accord began to collapse in , more currencies were allowed to float freely against one another.

The values of individual currencies vary based on demand and circulation and are monitored by foreign exchange trading services. Commercial and investment banks conduct most of the trading in forex markets on behalf of their clients, but there are also speculative opportunities for trading one currency against another for professional and individual investors. There are two distinct features of currencies as an asset class :. An investor can profit from the difference between two interest rates in two different economies by buying the currency with the higher interest rate and shorting the currency with the lower interest rate.

Prior to the financial crisis, it was very common to short the Japanese yen JPY and buy British pounds GBP because the interest rate differential was very large. This strategy is sometimes referred to as a carry trade. Currency trading was very difficult for individual investors prior to the Internet.

Most currency traders were large multinational corporations , hedge funds , or high-net-worth individuals HNWIs because forex trading required a lot of capital. With help from the Internet, a retail market aimed at individual traders has emerged, providing easy access to the foreign exchange markets through either the banks themselves or brokers making a secondary market.

Most online brokers or dealers offer very high leverage to individual traders who can control a large trade with a small account balance. The FX market is where currencies are traded.

It is the only truly continuous and nonstop trading market in the world. In the past, the forex market was dominated by institutional firms and large banks, which acted on behalf of clients. But it has become more retail-oriented in recent years, and traders and investors of many holding sizes have begun participating in it. An interesting aspect of world forex markets is that there are no physical buildings that function as trading venues for the markets.

Instead, it is a series of connections made through trading terminals and computer networks. Participants in this market are institutions, investment banks, commercial banks, and retail investors. The foreign exchange market is considered more opaque than other financial markets. Currencies are traded in OTC markets, where disclosures are not mandatory. Large liquidity pools from institutional firms are a prevalent feature of the market. A survey found that the motives of large financial institutions played the most important role in determining currency prices.

Forex is traded primarily via three venues: spot markets, forwards markets, and futures markets. When people refer to the forex market, they are thus usually referring to the spot market. The forwards and futures markets tend to be more popular with companies or financial firms that need to hedge their foreign exchange risks out to a specific date in the future. Forex trading in the spot market has always been the largest because it trades in the biggest underlying real asset for the forwards and futures markets.

Previously, volumes in the forwards and futures markets surpassed those of the spot markets. However, the trading volumes for forex spot markets received a boost with the advent of electronic trading and the proliferation of forex brokers.

The spot market is where currencies are bought and sold based on their trading price. That price is determined by supply and demand and is calculated based on several factors, including current interest rates, economic performance, sentiment toward ongoing political situations both locally and internationally , and the perception of the future performance of one currency against another.

A finalized deal is known as a spot deal. It is a bilateral transaction in which one party delivers an agreed-upon currency amount to the counterparty and receives a specified amount of another currency at the agreed-upon exchange rate value.

After a position is closed, the settlement is in cash. Although the spot market is commonly known as one that deals with transactions in the present rather than in the future , these trades actually take two days for settlement. A forward contract is a private agreement between two parties to buy a currency at a future date and at a predetermined price in the OTC markets.

A futures contract is a standardized agreement between two parties to take delivery of a currency at a future date and at a predetermined price. Futures trade on exchanges and not OTC. In the forwards market, contracts are bought and sold OTC between two parties, who determine the terms of the agreement between themselves. In the futures market, futures contracts are bought and sold based upon a standard size and settlement date on public commodities markets, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange CME.

In the United States, the National Futures Association NFA regulates the futures market. Futures contracts have specific details, including the number of units being traded, delivery and settlement dates, and minimum price increments that cannot be customized.

The exchange acts as a counterparty to the trader, providing clearance and settlement services. Both types of contracts are binding and are typically settled for cash at the exchange in question upon expiry, although contracts can also be bought and sold before they expire.

The currency forwards and futures markets can offer protection against risk when trading currencies. Usually, big international corporations use these markets to hedge against future exchange rate fluctuations, but speculators take part in these markets as well.

In addition to forwards and futures, options contracts are also traded on certain currency pairs. Forex options give holders the right, but not the obligation, to enter into a forex trade at a future date and for a pre-set exchange rate, before the option expires.

Unlike the spot market, the forwards, futures, and options markets do not trade actual currencies. Instead, they deal in contracts that represent claims to a certain currency type, a specific price per unit, and a future date for settlement. This is why they are known as derivatives markets. Companies doing business in foreign countries are at risk due to fluctuations in currency values when they buy or sell goods and services outside of their domestic market.

Foreign exchange markets provide a way to hedge currency risk by fixing a rate at which the transaction will be completed. To accomplish this, a trader can buy or sell currencies in the forward or swap markets in advance, which locks in an exchange rate.

For example, imagine that a company plans to sell U. Unfortunately, the U. dollar begins to rise in value vs. A stronger dollar resulted in a much smaller profit than expected.

The blender company could have reduced this risk by short selling the euro and buying the U. dollar when they were at parity. That way, if the U. dollar rose in value, then the profits from the trade would offset the reduced profit from the sale of blenders. If the U.

dollar fell in value, then the more favorable exchange rate would increase the profit from the sale of blenders, which offsets the losses in the trade.

Hedging of this kind can be done in the currency futures market. The advantage for the trader is that futures contracts are standardized and cleared by a central authority. However, currency futures may be less liquid than the forwards markets, which are decentralized and exist within the interbank system throughout the world.

Factors like interest rates , trade flows, tourism, economic strength, and geopolitical risk affect the supply and demand for currencies, creating daily volatility in the forex markets. A forecast that one currency will weaken is essentially the same as assuming that the other currency in the pair will strengthen because currencies are traded as pairs.

The trader believes higher U. If the investor had shorted the AUD and went long on the USD, then they would have profited from the change in value.

Do you think things in the United States are generally going in the right direction or the wrong direction? Weekend Recs. A micro forex account will help you become more comfortable with forex trading and determine your trading style. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Ryan Deffenbaugh is a reporter at Protocol focused on fintech. Invest in Land. Most currency traders were large multinational corporations , hedge funds , or high-net-worth individuals HNWIs because forex trading required a lot of capital.

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