On today’s program, Donald Trump takes his company public, Sam Bankman Fried was sentenced for 25 years after committing one of the biggest financial frauds in US History and a Shipping vessel crashed into the Baltimore bridge, causing it to collapse. How will this affect the people of Baltimore?

Donald Trump had taken his Truth Social Media Company public and it was valued close to US$8 Billion Dollars. Trump Media &Technology, the parent company behind Truth Social Media had actually merged with Digital World Acquisition Corporate, a shell company known to take other companies public, and is now trading under the stock symbol DJT, which represents Trump’s initials when he was president of the United States. Research suggested that since the stock was listed on Monday, Donald Trump had actually netted about US$4.6 Billion Dollars and placed him for the first time ever on the Forbes 500 richest persons in the world. Truth Social was actually created after the president candidate was sensitized on Instagram and banned from Twitter for allegations he instituted a riot at Capitol Hill in 2021. Truth Social has been running in a deficit since inception carrying tens of millions of dollars in losses and failed to attract advertisers and new users. The Social Media company has really struggled with generating revenues, creating only US$5M since its inception in 2021. Trump is one of the most influential persons on Social Media, where he has a following of 34M on Facebook, 24M on Instagram and over 87M on Twitter now X. He was only able to attract 6.8M followers on Truth Social, which suggested that the popularity of the Social Media company is low. With the popularity of Trump on other social media platforms, it was recorded that around 52M shares were traded causing the stock to be halted. Typically stocks volumes that trade are normally 1% at most on a day to day basis, but the media company actually saw many times their amount traded which meant the demand and hype around it was high.

Sam Bankman Fried will be spending his prime years in solitary confinement after he was charged with one of if not the biggest financial fraud cases in American History. The former FTX founder was sentenced to 25 years behind bars after he was alleged to steal US$8 Billion Dollars in client funds in 2023. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, dismissed claims Fried made of FTX clients not losing funds and also has evidence that he lied during his hearing trial in 2023. A jury had found Fried guilt of 7 counts of fraud and conspiracy counts.

For more details on the trial head on over to our episode entitled “US Inflation Rises Again Amidst an Optimistic Downfall.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3m0E9rY0k4VZez6ZzlXu1j?si=X2R7KFS6T-qzh4MyjaYzpA

Judge Kaplan has shared that Bankman-Fried has shown no remorse for the crimes he committed. Bankman-Fried offered an apology to FTX customers and to his colleagues, but no admittance of the crime or any wrongdoing by himself or the company was made. Bankman-Fried had three colleagues that had testified against him during the trials of which they admit that they were advised by the “crypto king” himself to pull funds from FTX and use to try to stop or at least minimize the losses that Alamaeda Research faced during the time. All three colleagues pleaded guilty.  It is believed that Bankman-Fried used customer funds to purchase lavish real estate.

A shipping vessel that is believed to have lost power on its route out of the Baltimore harbour crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge where 6 persons are presumed dead. The persons that fell over were a part of a crew that was fixing potholes when the ship crashed. Rescuers had saved two persons but another six were unable to be accounted for. In the early 1800s the harbour was a place where both enslaved and free black workers could work. The port and area around the port is filled with a lot of immigrant workers who have little to no health insurance.