Nkwe writes: Russians are searching for pirated Microsoft software online after the US tech giant halted sales in the country over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kommersant newspaper reported earlier this week. Russia-based web searches for pirated Microsoft software have surged by as much as 250% after the company suspended new sales on March 4, according to Kommersant. In June so far, there's been a 650% surge in searches for Excel downloads, the media outlet added. Microsoft said earlier this month it's significantly scaling down business in Russia, joining a long list of companies winding down businesses in the country amid sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine. The move hits Russia hard because the country relies on foreign software to power many of its manufacturing and engineering tech systems, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Russian government agencies, too, are switching from Microsoft's Windows to the Linux operating system, the Moscow Times reported last Friday. Developers of Russian systems based on the Linux open source operating system are also seeing more demand, Kommersant reported. Not all sectors are able to swap out their systems easily.

Wall Street analysts estimate TSMC will grow second-quarter revenue 43 percent quarter-over-quarter to $18.1 billion. Intel, on the other hand, is expected to see sales decline 2 percent sequentially to $17.98 billion in the same period, according to estimates collected by Yahoo Finance. The Register reports: The potential for TSMC to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue is indicative of how demand has grown for contract chip manufacturing, fueled by companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, and Apple who design their own chips and outsource manufacturing to foundries like TSMC. This trend has created a quandary for Intel. The semiconductor giant has traditionally manufactured the chips it designs as part of its integrated device manufacturing model but the company is now increasingly reliant on TSMC and other foundries for certain components, while expanding its own manufacturing capacity in the West.

The kicker is that Intel plans to use this increased capacity to produce more of its own chips while also supporting its revitalized foundry business, which hopes to take business from TSMC and South Korea's Samsung, the industry's other leading-edge chipmaker, in the future. This new strategy by Intel is called IDM 2.0, and it means the chipmaker will have to juggle two somewhat conflicting objectives:

- taking foundry market share away from TSMC and Samsung by convincing various fabless chip designers to use its plants;
- and using leading-edge nodes from TSMC and Samsung for certain components to compete with fabless companies like AMD and Nvidia. "Samsung has already surpassed Intel as the largest semiconductor company by revenue, so TSMC potentially growing larger than the x86 giant further underscores the tentative position Intel is in," concludes the report.

According to Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is reportedly considering a deal to acquire digital trading platform Robinhood. From a report: Robinhood has not yet received a formal notice from FTX of any such takeover, the report said, while adding that FTX could ultimately choose not to pursue a purchase. The report of a potential acquisition by FTX comes just over a month after Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO and founder of FTX, disclosed a 7.6% stake in Robinhood, paying $648 million at the time. As of Monday's close, this position was worth closer to $513 million. In a statement to Yahoo Finance following this report, Bankman-Fried said: "We are excited about Robinhood's business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them, and I have always been impressed by the business that Vlad and his team have built. That being said there are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood."

In recent days, Bankman-Fried's companies -- FTX and Alameda Research -- have offered loans to crypto firms in rough financial straits, with some likening his actions to those of Warren Buffett's during the Financial Crisis. Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX offered crypto lender BlockFi a $250 million line of credit. Meanwhile, the 30-year old billionaire's trading firm, Alameda Research, has given Canadian crypto exchange Voyager a total line of credit in cash and crypto equal to more than $500 million. Similar to what Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao, told Yahoo Finance, Bankman-Fried's actions could be interpreted both as a profit-making opportunity and a way to squash contagion in a sector where firms remain deeply intertwined in their financial dealings.

Last week a headline in the Los Angeles Times proclaimed "Look! Up in the sky! It's an air taxi. They're coming to Los Angeles."

Even the British newspaper the Times took notice: Air taxis will be flying through the skies above Los Angeles in time for the summer Olympics of 2028 if city officials and entrepreneurs have their way.

A Silicon Valley company is the latest to claim that it is close to creating viable electric vehicles that can offer short hops above the traffic-choked streets for not much more than the cost of an Uber ride. Adam Goldstein, chief executive of Archer Aviation, told the Los Angeles Times that his vertical take-off aircraft, designed to travel 60 miles on a single charge at up to 150mph, would "completely change the way we live, the way we work", and could be flying within two years.
The Los Angeles Times cited estimates of $1 billion spent testing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, known as eVTOL, just last year, and noted the "hundreds of companies competing" to build a new "transportation empire." And their opening paragraph paints the scene: Imagine avoiding that soul-crushing, hourlong slog — say from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. on a Tuesday morning. Instead, you hail a high-tech cab that will hop over the gridlock and get you there in nine minutes.... The promise of flying cars — for generations a Hollywood staple of a space-age future, from "The Jetsons" to "Blade Runner" — is finally becoming a reality, so much so that a Swedish company is already selling a single-passenger vehicle called Jetson 1. Los Angeles transportation officials are preparing for this new era and expect drone-like electric air taxis to be operational by the time the 2028 Summer Olympics roll around, if not far sooner....

While many detractors doubt that such travel will soon be viable, affordable or safe, the industry is working with cities to make the technology a reality in the next five years.
The Observer also noted that another eVTOL pioneer, Germany's Volocopter, plans to launch commercial service for its two-seat VoloCity aircraft in 2024 in Europe, with a four-seater by 2026. But are there possible downsides? In cities like New York, wealthy commuters are already taking helicopter rides on a regular basis, and complaints about helicopter noise have skyrocketed in recent years, prompting the city to introduce a bill last week to ban non-essential helicopter uses, such as sightseeing and short-distance travel, in parts of Manhattan.

eVTOLs are quieter than helicopters by design, but they are by no means silent.
Even the Los Angeles Times acknowledges "There are concerns about safety, quality of life and affordability." While a single air taxi may be relatively quiet, what happens when there is a constant stream of them coming in and out of a landing spot? Should there be nighttime restrictions on flights? Will this just be a means for the ultra-wealthy to buzz over poor neighborhoods to Dodger Stadium or Crypto.com Arena?
But the Times' article still drew angry letters to the editor, with one calling air taxis "a disaster waiting to happen." Instead of boosterism reporting and parroting industry marketing claims that these aircraft are some kind of a godsend, how about reporting on how many decibels these flying bubbles for the elite will blare onto the plebes below...? [T]he paper's naive reporting on the technology are disappointing.
They'd also called the Times' claim of $50-a-flight prices "fanciful" — and a second letter writer also expressed skepticism about that low estimated cost. "That reminds one of the outlandish initial promise we were given that the bullet train would cost $33 billion to build."

Bloomberg writes that the makers of the Robinhood app "faced a more dire situation during the height of last year's meme-stock frenzy than executives at the online brokerage let on publicly, according to a report from top Democrats on a key congressional committee." A more-than-yearlong investigation by staff on the House Financial Services Committee concluded Friday that the frenzied trading in GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. posed a significant threat to the online brokerage. Robinhood avoided defaulting on its regulatory collateral obligations in late January 2021 only because it received a waiver from its clearinghouse, according to the findings... "The company was only saved from defaulting on its daily collateral deposit requirement by a discretionary and unexplained waiver," according to the report. "Robinhood's risk-management processes did not work well to predict and avert the risk of default that materialized...."

The 138-page document released on Friday provides the most detailed look yet at how alarmed Robinhood executives grew over the situation in late January 2021. According to the findings, those actions didn't match the firm's public assertions.

America's Securities and Exchange Commission "is considering broad changes to curb the frenetic trading of stocks based on social media activity," reports Reuters: The proposed overhaul would be the biggest change to Wall Street's rules since 2005 and would affect nearly every corner of the market, from commission-free brokerages to market makers and exchanges. The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services on Friday called for the SEC, along with other regulators, to do more to protect the markets from similar events....

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee on Friday urged Congress to adopt legislation mandating the SEC study how its rules need to change to address new technological developments, such as digital engagement practices and social media-driven market activity.

Mark Zuckerberg's intense focus on the metaverse has replaced securing elections as the Meta CEO's top concern, four Meta employees with knowledge of the situation told The New York Times. From a report: Zuckerberg has been public with his desire to transform Meta -- formerly known as Facebook -- into a metaverse company, ploughing billions of dollars into developing metaverse technology.

The New York Times reports Meta's core election team has shrunk significantly since 2020. With the US midterms approaching, a reduced election team at Meta could mean less enforcement against misinformation. Whereas it used to comprise over 300 people, now 60 people spend their time focused on election security and some additional employees divide their time between elections and other projects, sources told The Times.

Belief in God among Americans dipped to a new low, Gallup's latest poll shows. While the majority of adults in the U.S. believe in God, belief has dropped to 81% -- the lowest ever recorded by Gallup -- and is down from 87% in 2017. From a report: Between 1944 and 2011, more than 90% of Americans believed in God, Gallup reported. Younger, liberal Americans are the least likely to believe in God, according to Gallup's May 2-22 values and beliefs poll results released Friday. Political conservatives and married adults had little change when comparing 2022 data to an average of polls from 2013 to 2017. The groups with the largest declines are liberals (62% of whom believe in God), young adults (68%) and Democrats (72%), while belief in God is highest among conservatives (94%) and Republicans (92%). The poll also found that slightly more than half of conservatives and Republicans say they believe God hears prayers and can intervene, as well as 32% of Democrats, 25% of liberals and 30% of young adults.

The Los Angeles Times reports on "a massive surge of criminal fraud that has been pummeling crypto users with unknown billions of dollars in losses with little relief in sight." The growth in crypto fraud has turned exponential in recent years. The reported losses from crypto scams in 2021 were 60 times larger than in 2018, the Federal Trade Commission reported earlier this month, with crypto now accounting for 1 out of every 4 dollars lost to fraud in the reports monitored by the agency. Over 46,000 people lost more than $1 billion in crypto to scams since 2021, but the real sum of losses is likely vastly larger because most frauds are not reported, the agency said.... "Since 2021, $575 million of all crypto fraud losses reported to the FTC were about bogus investment opportunities, far more than any other fraud type," the agency reported.

Financial losses specifically from NFT crimes just through May this year were already more than 600% higher than for all of 2021, with the space seeing twice as many hacks and bigger and bigger heists, according to analysis from digital privacy firm Top10VPN.

For many victims, there's little hope of getting their lost art back. The marketplaces where NFTs get sold — crypto exchanges — can't cancel or reverse fraudulent transactions the way a traditional bank or credit card company might; the whole point of crypto was to cut out these sorts of financial middlemen, which many crypto fans greatly distrust. Crypto technology was built out of a "libertarian ethos" in which "there's no nanny state that's going to take care of you," said Jeremy Goldman, an intellectual property attorney who specializes in legal issues involving crypto assets. "These are the consequences when there's a mistake ... there's no one to unwind it, you can't call customer service, you can't go back to the mothership, you can't go back to the bank."

But at the same time, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have also shown a growing willingness and ability to mount sophisticated investigations into crypto fraud.... [I]n March, federal agents sought a court order to seize roughly $165,000 worth of Ethereum in a digital Binance.US wallet. Officials said the cryptocurrency had been stolen from an Orange County investor, nicknamed "P.M.," who got tricked into giving up his coins by an fraudster pretending to be a Coinbase technical support representative.
On the bright side, BuzzFeed notes that actor Seth Green has recovered his prized Bored Ape NFT from "Mr Cheese" for $297,000 worth of Ether.

But the Los Angeles Times points out that another victim of a Bored Ape heist has sued the creators of Bored Apes. Their lawyer argues the company "refuses to police their own community. They're the gatekeepers, they can lock out the thieves if they wanted to, and they won't do it."

The state of Utah has the largest saltwater lake in the entire western hemisphere — but it's like the tide went out and never came back, warns the New York Times. [Alternate URL here.]

"If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here's what's in store." The lake's flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.

Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous.

The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, wind storms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah's population. "We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that's going to go off if we don't take some pretty dramatic action," said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.

As climate change continues to cause record-breaking drought, there are no easy solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require letting more snowmelt from the mountains flow to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. That would threaten the region's breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture — something state leaders seem reluctant to do. Utah's dilemma raises a core question as the country heats up: How quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even as those effects become urgent, obvious, and potentially catastrophic...?

Until recently, that hydrological system existed in a delicate balance... [T]wo changes are throwing that system out of balance. One is explosive population growth, diverting more water from those rivers before they reach the lake. The other shift is climate change, according to Robert Gillies, a professor at Utah State University and Utah's state climatologist. Higher temperatures cause more snowpack to transform to water vapor, which then escapes into the atmosphere, rather than turning to liquid and running into rivers. More heat also means greater demand for water for lawns or crops, further reducing the amount that reaches the lake....

The lake's surface area, which covered about 3,300 square miles in the late 1980s, has since shrunk to less than 1,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Power-hungry, fossil-fuel dependent Japan has successfully tested a system that could provide a constant, steady form of renewable energy, regardless of the wind or the sun," reports Bloomberg: For more than a decade, Japanese heavy machinery maker IHI Corp. has been developing a subsea turbine that harnesses the energy in deep ocean currents and converts it into a steady and reliable source of electricity.... Called Kairyu, the 330-ton prototype is designed to be anchored to the sea floor at a depth of 30-50 meters (100-160 feet).

In commercial production, the plan is to site the turbines in the Kuroshio Current, one of the world's strongest, which runs along Japan's eastern coast, and transmit the power via seabed cables.... Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) estimates the Kuroshio Current could potentially generate as much as 200 gigawatts — about 60% of Japan's present generating capacity....

Japan is already the world's third largest generator of solar power and is investing heavily in offshore wind, but harnessing ocean currents could provide the reliable baseline power needed to reduce the need for energy storage or fossil fuels.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article!

NPR reports: Just last month [Apple] decided to postpone its plan after more than 1,000 current and former employees signed an open letter called the plan inefficient, inflexible and a waste of time. "Stop treating us like school kids who need to be told when to be where and what homework to do," they wrote. It was yet more evidence of the shift in the balance of power between management and rank and file, as demand for workers has hit record highs in the past year.

Companies are finding it hard to enforce unpopular policies and mandates when they fear their workers could just walk away.... Google maps workers, who are employed by the tech company Cognizant, also decided to fight back. They connected with the Alphabet Workers Union and signed a petition citing COVID fears, the costs of commuting amid $5 gas, and the increase in productivity and morale that employees have experienced while working from home.... "Our first day back to the Bothell office full-time will now be September 6," the company said in a statement released on Thursday.

Even as some companies seek to bring back some semblance of office life, others are asking: What is the office for anyway?
In an iconic moment, NPR's reporter also visited a management consulting firm, where their new human resources worker (who started in May) admits that "It's hard to even fathom going into the office 100%. I don't think I could do it ever again."

Saturday the New York Times also reported that some corporate leaders "might find themselves fighting a culture shift beyond their control.... [Non-paywalled version here]

"If the pandemic's two-plus years of remote work experimentation have taught us anything, it's that many people can be productive outside the office, and quite a few are happier doing so." Even as the pandemic has changed course, there are signs that the work-from-home trend is actually accelerating. One recent survey published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that employers are now saying they will allow employees to work from home an average of 2.3 days per week, up from 1.5 days in the summer of 2020.

It's not just the office — it's also the commute. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that almost all of the major cities with the biggest drops in office occupancy during the pandemic had an average one-way commute of more than 30 minutes; and most cities with the smallest drops had shorter commutes.

This week saw the premiere of The Orville: New Horizons on Hulu — a third season, now streaming after two seasons on broadcast TV from 2017 to 2019. Seth MacFarlane (the show's creator/star) tells the Hollywood Reporter how that will change the Orville: "The biggest difference for me being on Hulu is that I don't have to tell a story that's exactly 43 minutes long every week because I have to make room for a certain number of commercials.

"That's not how storytelling works — different stories are different lengths, and you start to fall into this cadence where you're shaving scenes down, you're cutting things that don't need to be cut. The best part about being on Hulu is that those moments where you want to linger on an actor's face because it's meaningful and it helps to tell the story? You can do that. You have the time; you can be indulgent in that way."
MacFarlane tells TV Guide the series is now "a dramatic sci-fi show with comedic elements that come about from the character's personalities." And MacFarlane tells ABC News, "I think people can expect a lot more than they think they can." It's not just Covid that's the reason that it's taken so long. It's a pretty massive uptick in scope. We're only doing 10 episodes, as opposed to 12, they're longer episodes. The scope of these episodes is much more film-like. I think people are a little unprepared for what's to come. Disney and Hulu really gave us the resources to do this right, and we've put it all on the screen.
Long-time Slashdot reader Marxist Hacker 42 wrote a journal entry (with some spoilers) about the new season's premiere episode, noting "a very powerful morality tale" that led to a fifth act with "some prime technobabble worthy of the show's Star Trek heritage." (While long-time Slashdot reader antdude calls it "better than the newer Star Trek like Picard," long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo calls it "an enjoyable watch, and would have been the highlight of the week if it wasn't for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds overshadowing it."

GameRant argues that The Orville in general "is actually truer to the Star Trek spirit than any of the franchise's contemporary entries."

And the series will also stay true to its Yaphit, reports Yahoo Entertainment: Behind the scenes, The Orville team bid farewell to one longtime crew member during the production of Season 3. Comedian Norm Macdonald has voiced fan favorite character, Lt. Yaphit, since the show's freshman year and completed recording his dialogue prior to his death from leukemia last September.

MacFarlane says that he wasn't aware of Macdonald's illness during their three-season collaboration. "As I finish the episodes, the emotion that I feel more than anything is gratitude that he left us with all this great stuff," he remarks. "I was very moved by the fact that he had continued to record for us and continued to play this part. As sad as it is, I'm happy there's more Norm yet to come through The Orville."

Asked whether Macdonald's passing means that Yaphit's tenure aboard The Orville will also conclude at the end of Season 3, MacFarlane suggests that fans may not have seen the last of the gelatinous lieutenant. "We do have a plan," he teases. "We would not do Yaphit without Norm, but there is a plan for how we are going to handle it if we are lucky enough to do Season 4." (As of now, a fourth season is up in the air as the cast's contracts have expired.)

Greece has passed its first climate law, which sets out specific targets to fight climate change and wean itself off coal in power generation by 2028. From a report: The legislation sets interim targets for Greece to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and by 80% by 2040 before achieving zero-net emissions by 2050. It also engages the country to cut dependence on fossil fuels, including weaning off indigenous lignite or brown coal -- once the main source of energy -- in electricity production from 2028 onwards. This target might be brought forward to 2025, taking into account security of supplies. "It's an existential matter, a very important one, because it has to do with our lives, because it has to do with our children's lives," Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas told lawmakers before the vote. "Is this just going to help protect the environment? ÎÎ, it's not. It also helps the country's energy security."

Technology entrepreneur Michael Dell once again finds himself at the center of one of his industry's biggest deals. From a report: Dell holds a roughly $16.2 billion stake in VMware, meaning he's likely to have a important say in a potential takeover of the cloud-computing provider by chip maker Broadcom. The two companies are in talks about a transaction, Bloomberg News reported Sunday. While it's not known what price Broadcom is willing to pay for VMware, which has a market value of $40 billion, it may have to offer a sizable premium to get the company's shareholders on board. VMware's market capitalization touched $70 billion as recently as October, when Dell's interest would have been worth some $28 billion. Shares in VMware rose 15% in premarket trading on Monday, which would value the company at about $46 billion.

2016: "Wells Fargo Fires 5,300 Employees For Creating Millions of Phony Accounts"
2017: "Up To 1.4M More Fake Wells Fargo Accounts Possible"

The headlines kept coming.... ("Wells Fargo Hit With 'Unprecedented' Punishment Over Fake Accounts..." "Wells Fargo Employee Informed the Bank of Fake Customer Accounts in 2006")

But this week the New York Times reported a new allegation — involving fake job interviews: Joe Bruno, a former executive in the wealth management division of Wells Fargo, had long been troubled by the way his unit handled certain job interviews. For many open positions, employees would interview a "diverse" candidate — the bank's term for a woman or person of color — in keeping with the bank's yearslong informal policy. But Mr. Bruno noticed that often, the so-called diverse candidate would be interviewed for a job that had already been promised to someone else. He complained to his bosses. They dismissed his claims. Last August, Mr. Bruno, 58, was fired. In an interview, he said Wells Fargo retaliated against him for telling his superiors that the "fake interviews" were "inappropriate, morally wrong, ethically wrong." Wells Fargo said Mr. Bruno was dismissed for retaliating against a fellow employee.

Mr. Bruno is one of seven current and former Wells Fargo employees who said that they were instructed by their direct bosses or human resources managers in the bank's wealth management unit to interview "diverse" candidates — even though the decision had already been made to give the job to another candidate.

Five others said they were aware of the practice, or helped to arrange it...

Third Position shares a report from The Verge: Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter is "temporarily on hold" after the social network reported that false or spam accounts comprised less than 5 percent of its 226 million monetizable daily active users. The Tesla CEO, who offered to buy twitter for $44 billion, tweeted a link to a May 2nd Reuters report on Twitter's filing, saying he wants to see the company's calculations.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted. However, in a follow-up tweet, he added that he's "still committed to [the] acquisition," suggesting that it'll proceed after Twitter provides satisfactory information on its numbers. Slashdot reader Excelcia shared a similar report from the BBC, which cited analysts speculating "he could be seeking to renegotiate the price or even walk away from the takeover."

"One analyst, as quoted in the story, suggests that 'Many will view this as Musk using this Twitter filing/spam accounts as a way to get out of this deal in a vastly changing market,'" writes Excelcia. "Shares have dropped another 10% since the announcement."

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is introducing legislation that would strip the Walt Disney Company of special copyright protections granted to the corporation by Congress, while also limiting the length of new copyrights. From a report: The "Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022" would cap the length of copyrights given corporations by Congress to 56 years and retroactively implement this change on companies, including Walt Disney. "The age of Republican handouts to Big Business is over. Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists. It's time to take away Disney's special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation," Hawley told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement. According to Hawley's office, Congress has used an old law, also known as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," in order to extend copyrights to corporations for up to 120 years. Instead of issuing copyright protections to create enough monopoly protection in order to foster innovation, companies are getting handouts from Congress for a much longer period than needed.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that she believes the Federal Reserve can bring down inflation without causing a recession because of a strong U.S. job market and household balance sheets, low debt costs and a strong banking sector. From a report: Yellen told a U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee hearing on Thursday that "all of those things suggest that the Fed has a path to bring down inflation without causing a recession, and I know it will be their objective to try to accomplish that."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: President Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin gambit is becoming onerous for cash-strapped El Salvador but that isn't stopping him from adding to his stockpile. Bukele's bought 2,301 Bitcoins for the government since making them legal tender back in September, based on his announcements on Twitter. That includes a purchase of 500 coins yesterday as their price plunged below $31,000, extending a wild six-month sell-off. Those tokens are worth $74 million today. That's 28% less than the $103 million Bukele paid for them, according to calculations by Bloomberg.

Bukele has shown himself to be a true believer in crypto, winning attention and admirers from around the world in the process, and says he trades the nation's stockpile of coins on his phone. The 40-year-old has said he will push ahead with plans to issue a $1 billion blockchain bond to fund the construction of Bitcoin City, an income and capital gains tax-free jurisdiction he hopes to create on the country's coast. Bukele tweeted pictures on Monday of a mockup for the planned city, which includes an international airport. It would use geothermal energy from a nearby volcano. According to JPMorgan's emerging market bond index, El Salvador's dollar bonds have pluged 24% this year, "as concern mounts that the government will fail to pay back $800 million of notes that come due in January," notes Bloomberg. "Moody's cut the government's credit rating to Caa3 last week, citing an increased risk of default."