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EXCLUSIVE: Paramedics speak out about empty hospitals, probable vax injuries during COVID

Paramedics say they transferred few COVID-19 patients during the early stages of the pandemic — despite media claims that hospitals were overwhelmed — but since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines they've seen a rise in heart attacks, strokes, and chronic infections.

"If I hadn't heard about COVID all day, every day in the news, I don't think I would have known that anything was any different," said Greg McTague, a paramedic of 25 years from Penticton, B.C. "It seems clear to me at this point, the vaccines are causing a lot more harm than the actual virus."

In response to an anonymous testimonial by an Atlanta, Georgia paramedic, who claimed to be seeing a huge increase in cardiac-related calls for vaccinated men aged 18-30, the Western Standard put out a call on Twitter to see if paramedics were experiencing something similar.

The Western Standard heard from more than a dozen healthcare workers, including six paramedics, three emergency dispatchers, two nurses, two firefighters, and an embalmer.

All said they'd begun seeing an increase in medical conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes, chronic infections, and women with menstrual issues, after the vaccines were rolled out. But they said a culture of silence in the healthcare industry, particularly among doctors, was preventing the issues from being openly discussed.

Many healthcare workers said they feared they would lose their jobs for speaking out. The Western Standard chose to showcase the stories of three paramedics, one of whom chose not to share her identity.
'The vaccines are causing a lot more harm than the actual virus'

McTague said he wasn't busy during the pandemic's early stages. He claimed many people were so afraid of contracting COVID-19 they chose not to go the hospital, even if they were experiencing serious medical episodes.

"We weren't being called for COVID-19. It was our usual medical calls and car accidents and stuff like that. But I don't know anybody who actually had COVID that was serious enough to warrant a 911 call or a hospital visit."

McTague also said every patient that was brought into the hospital was labeled as having COVID-19, no matter what their symptoms were.

"I think they might have even said explicitly 'everybody's COVID until proven otherwise,'" he said, adding that the media and politicians exaggerated the severity of COVID-19.

McTague said following the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, he began seeing "weird stuff that I had never seen before." These included a woman in her 30s who suddenly went permanently blind, men under the age of 25 having heart attacks, and people having seizures for the first time later in life, which McTague said "usually happens when people are younger."

"I saw a few people that went blind, but her in particular, she was pretty young and healthy. People don't just suddenly go blind unless they get hit in the head or have a stroke. To just go blind, shortly after being vaccinated, I can't imagine what else that would be," McTague said.

Many of the people McTague saw with heart attacks and strokes, "didn't have the textbook presentations or symptoms."

"There was a guy in his in his 20s, who was a very fit, bodybuilder type. He woke up in the middle of the night screaming with chest pains. We couldn't even assess him because he couldn't talk to us. He was in so much pain and writhing around. I can't prove to you what caused that, but he had been vaccinated," McTague said.

McTague said because the majority of paramedics got vaccinated and "obviously felt an air of superiority," they are more likely to "turn a blind eye" to injuries that could have been caused by vaccines.

"They just say, 'it can't be the vaccine, because that's been proven safe and effective. So it's got to be something else,'" McTague said.

"Then people like me, we see these calls differently. We look at a patient with those presentations, and we think, 'we can't prove it, but maybe it was the vaccine,' and we are at least open-minded. Whereas the other people wouldn't even consider it as a possibility. Because they also don't want to admit they might have made a mistake."

McTague ended up losing his job in October of 2021 for not getting vaccinated. He said besides wishing he had gotten a full pension, he doesn't regret his decision. "I don't miss that job at all. And the way things are now, I don't think I could ever go back anyways," he said.

McTague said he believes the COVID-19 vaccines have caused more damage than the virus itself. "I'm not saying that there is no COVID virus, I just don't think it's any more serious than the average seasonal flu. And what the politicians have done is beyond stupid."

'I've seen a lot of these cases in the last few weeks.'

Elliot Axelman, a paramedic of eight years from New Hampshire, and author of Corona-Fascism, also claimed to not have been busy during the initial months of the pandemic. He said it appeared many were too afraid of getting COVID-19 to come to hospitals.

Asked if he saw an increase in COVID-19 patients, Axelman said he "never noticed anything different among anyone, to be honest."

"I remember this one guy, we were bringing him back to a nursing home, and he had beaten COVID. He was 85 years-old, with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, CHF, COPD, and other issues, and he'd had COVID and got over it. I thought, 'he's the ideal guy this disease is supposed to kill,'" Axelman said.

Axelman claimed hospitals in the U.S. over counting COVID-19 patients "by potentially tenfold." He claimed the PCR tests were done at 45 cycles instead of the recommended 25, resulting in a higher number of false positives and they used an overly broad list of symptoms for COVID-19 that ended up including people with other illnesses.

Additionally, Axelman said for every COVID-19 positive patient a hospital admitted, they received around $13,000 from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS). When a hospital would put a patient on a ventilator, the hospital would also received approximately $39,000 from the CMS.

While the fact-checking site Snopes acknowledged that hospitals receive money for patients admitted for COVID-19 and placed on ventilators, they said "the $13,000 and $39,000 figures appear to be based on generic industry estimates for admitting and treating patients with similar conditions."

Axelman said he's heard of an increase in cardiac-related calls in young men since the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out. One case that stuck out to Axelman was a 17-year old boy that came with chest pain and dizziness two days after his second shot. Axelman said the boy had elevated Troponin levels, which is a protein released into the blood after a heart attack.

"I was talking to the attending doctor in the ER. And she was freaked out," Axleman said. "She was like, 'I've seen a lot of these cases in the last few weeks.' And I asked, 'so young males with myocarditis after the second shot?' And she's like, 'Yeah.'"

Axelman said while most cells in the human body can regenerate, brain and heart cells cannot. "When they die, they're dead forever. And that's the issue with heart failure. It's always progressive. It never really gets better."

Since the vaccine rollout, Axelman said he has also seen a huge increase in females with "weird" issues with their menstrual cycles. He's heard of women experiencing heavy or irregular periods, and even cases where women who have already went through menopause got their periods again.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development noted COVID-19 vaccines were occasionally associated with a "small, temporary menstrual change in women.” But Axelman said even minor menstrual cycle changes can have far-reaching implications for women's fertility.

"You don't need to be a genius to know that the same system that affects the period, is the one that impacts fertility and pregnancy," he said.

'They're all so, so sick. It's just this general decline in the population'

A paramedic of 18 years from Southern Ontario, who refused to divulge her full name because of fears she could lose her job, said the call volume for paramedics was reduced during the first months of the pandemic. "Everybody was so scared, they were all staying home. But we were not seeing people sick with COVID-19," she said.

The paramedic said they were busier during that winter, but the call volume was still lower than previous years. "The only thing that was different than a normal flu season was that patients' oxygen saturation would be lower. But we never saw any young people. These were all 80 year-old, bedridden people [who] were dying," she said.

The paramedic said during the third wave of COVID-19, they kept hearing on the news that "Toronto hospitals were overwhelmed and they were using ambulances to transport people to surrounding hospitals." But after they signed up for a hospital transfer shift, they would "sit there for 12 hours."

"I did one transfer out of a Brampton hospital, but that was it. They eventually cancelled the program because nobody needed to be transferred out of the hospital," they said. "But then I would go home and hear on the news that hospitals were overwhelmed, and yet I had just been to the ICU that day, and seen that the place was half empty. And I thought 'what is going on here? Where are all the COVID patients?'"

The paramedic also claimed that screening for COVID-19 was extremely broad, and any patient with "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, shivers, or shortness of breath" was labelled as COVID positive.

"And that's considered to be everybody. So if you had a breathing problem because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, you were considered COVID positive. I don't know if that's how it worked for the hospital numbers, but that's how we would treat it when we were dispatched," they said.

The paramedic said during the Omicron wave of last winter, when "everybody I knew got sick with COVID," virtually nobody was sick enough to be transferred to hospitals.

"I would say I saw three people that maybe died in 2021, but they were all over 75 years-old and had all the comorbidities. Three people for a whole year. I work full-time in a busy service where I'm doing eight calls a shifts," she said.

But the paramedic said since the vaccine was rolled out, they have seen a large increase in young people experiencing chest pain right after getting vaccinated. They have also seen an uptick in middle-aged people suffering from strokes, and an "enormous amount of people in their 50s and 60s with new-onset heart arrhythmias."

"I have to do a very thorough history. They'll tell me these problems started a month ago, and then a couple questions later they'll say they got their fourth vaccine dose around that same time. I can't tell you how many healthy, older people have gotten their third and four doses, and now they've got these new cardiac issues. It just seems really obvious to me. I don't see unvaccinated people getting this sick."

The paramedic also claimed to be seeing older people with chronic infections that "just keep getting worse and worse."

"They tell me 'I just keep getting worse. I don't know what's going on. I can't get up anymore. I'm weak, I'm nauseated all the time, and I've got his chronic infection I can't seem to recover from.'"

"I've been working for 18 years, and the majority of my patients now are in their last few weeks of life," the paramedic said.

"They're just dying. They're all so, so sick. It's just this general decline in the population."

https://www.westernstandard.news/news/exclusive-paramedics-speak-out-about-empty-hospitals-probable-vax-injuries-during-covid/article_273993dc-0167-11ed-97d5-978f968c2e82.html

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👉 BlackRock CEO Larry Fink admits he was wrong about crypto.
00:00:45
🇺🇸 President Trump says there will be no income tax "at some point in the not-too-distant future."

As I have been telling you for a few years now, ALL Tax has ALWAYS been voluntary, since WWII donations started.

He has to do it this way so there isn't a revolution on the government's hands. If THEY just came out and told you it has always been voluntary, the people would rise up and take to the streets. There would be mass chaos. -Crypto Michael ⚡️The Dinarian

00:00:12
🚨 “WHAT HAPPENED IN CRYPTO TODAY” – COINTELEGRAPH’S DAILY WRAP 🚨

Cointelegraph’s live-blog snapshot (edition: 27 Nov 2025) packs the market-moving headlines, on-chain sparks and policy sound-bites that ricocheted through crypto in 24 hrs – from a surprise Basel stablecoin concession to a record open-interest print on BTC futures.

🔑 Key Headlines

🔹️ Basel Boost: BCBS officially dropped the punitive 1 250 % risk-weight for bank-held stablecoins (Tether, USDC) and replaced it with a tiered 20 %–100 % framework – unleashing a 2.4 B intraday rally in stablecoin issuer tokens and bank-centric DeFi plays.

🔹️ BTC Open Interest Record: Aggregate perpetual & futures OI hit 53.8 B (Deribit + CME + Binance) – 7 % above April peak – as whales added 1.1 B long exposure ahead of Friday’s 0-DTE expiry; funding flipped +18 % annualised.

🔹️ Nasdaq Tokenized Equities Live: Nasdaq’s ATS-Clearing hybrid went live with 3 private-company tokens; first trade executed 4.3 M face value in T+0 settlement, marking the first regulated U.S. exchange to custody & ...

00:00:06
👉 Coinbase just launched an AI agent for Crypto Trading

Custom AI assistants that print money in your sleep? 🔜

The future of Crypto x AI is about to go crazy.

👉 Here’s what you need to know:

💠 'Based Agent' enables creation of custom AI agents
💠 Users set up personalized agents in < 3 minutes
💠 Equipped w/ crypto wallet and on-chain functions
💠 Capable of completing trades, swaps, and staking
💠 Integrates with Coinbase’s SDK, OpenAI, & Replit

👉 What this means for the future of Crypto:

1. Open Access: Democratized access to advanced trading
2. Automated Txns: Complex trades + streamlined on-chain activity
3. AI Dominance: Est ~80% of crypto 👉txns done by AI agents by 2025

🚨 I personally wouldn't bet against Brian Armstrong and Jesse Pollak.

👉 Coinbase just launched an AI agent for Crypto Trading

🚨 UPDATE: CFTC NOW PERMITS SPOT CRYPTO TRADING ON REGISTERED EXCHANGES 🚨

In a landmark first for U.S. digital-asset regulation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has officially green-lighted spot crypto trading on federally registered exchanges, starting with Chicago-based Bitnomial this week. The move brings Bitcoin, Ether and other commodity-tokens under the same century-old regulatory umbrella that governs U.S. futures, options and swaps—complete with leverage, unified margin and clearing-house protection.

🔑 Key Breakthroughs

🔹️ Historic First: Bitnomial’s Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) will list spot BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL side-by-side with futures & perps—single portfolio margin, net settlement, T+0 delivery.

🔹️ Federal Umbrella: All orders—retail or institutional—clear through a CFTC-supervised clearing house, eliminating the patch-work of state money-transmitter licences that has kept U.S. leverage platforms ...

‼️HOW XRP RISES TO A SIGNIFICANTLY HIGH + STABLE VALUE‼️

As more Banks integrate Ripple’s DLT for International Payments, overall Transaction Flow across the network increases.📈

Payment Service Providers such as Finastra, Volante, and CGI will tap into XRPL’s Cross-Currency RTGS functions and its Neutral Liquidity Marketplace, adding even more activity to the network.💯

This momentum drives continued expansion of the XRP Ecosystem.🧩

XRP’s SUPPLY steadily declines over time because a small amount is DESTROYED with every transaction.💥

With SUPPLY TIGHTENING and DEMAND RISING, DEMAND naturally strengthens.

As Network Participation grows and XRP Utility increases, its VALUE moves higher.🚀

Ripple expects market VOLATILITY to level out as XRP gains consistent utility as a Bridge Asset.🔑

A growing network paired with a DECREASING SUPPLY BASE supports sustained PRICE APPRECIATION.

This positions XRP as an increasingly valuable and dependable asset within Global Payments.

Documented.✅📝

OP: Smqkedqg

🚨 MALAYSIA CRACKS DOWN ON BITCOIN MINERS BEHIND 1.1 B ELECTRICITY THEFT 🚨

Malaysian authorities have launched “Operasi Kripto Suria”, a nationwide blitz that has so far raided 487 premises, seized 76,000 ASICs and cut power to 1.4 GW of illicit load—the largest electricity-theft bust in Southeast-Asian history, valued at RM 5.2 billion (US 1.1 billion) in stolen electrons since 2022.

🔑 Key Facts

🔹️ Grid-Wide Raid: Energy Commission (ST) + Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) + police swept 11 states in 72 hours; Penang alone accounted for 420 MW of illegal load—equal to a 400 MW gas-turbine plant.

🔹️Theft Techniques: Minions tapped 11 kV distribution lines, used bypass jumpers, tampered smart meters and fake RFID seals; some sites ran 24/7 on stolen power for >18 months.

🔹️Seized Hardware: 76,000 rigs (mostly S19 & M50 series), 1,200 transformers, 600 km of illegal cable; three container-loads of ASICs are already on the block for public auction.

🔹️Arrests & Penalties: ...

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XDC Network's acquisition of Contour Network

XDC Network's acquisition of Contour Network marks a silent shift to connect the digital trade infrastructure to real-time, tokenized settlement rails.

In a world where cross-border payments still take days and trap trillions in idle liquidity, integrating Contour’s trade workflows with XDC Network Blockchains' ISO 20022 financial messaging standard to bridge TradFi and Web3 in Trade Finance.

The Current State of Cross-Border Trade Settlements

Cross-border payments remain one of the most inefficient parts of global finance. For decades, companies have inter-dependency with banks and their correspondent banks across the world, forcing them to maintain trillions of dollars in pre-funded nostro and vostro balances — the capital that sits idle while transactions crawl across borders.

Traditional settlement is slow, often 1–5 days, and often with ~2-3% in FX and conversion fees. For every hour a corporation can’t access its own cash increases the cost of financing, tightens liquidity that could be used for other purposes, which in turn slows economic activity.

Before SWIFT, payments were fully manual. Intermediary banks maintained ledgers, and reconciliation across multiple institutions limited speed and volume.

SWIFT reshaped global payments by introducing a secure, standardized messaging infrastructure through ISO 20022 - which quickly became the language of money for 11,000+ institutions in 200 countries.

But SWIFT only fixed the messaging — not the movement. Actual value still moves through slow, capital-intensive correspondent chains.

Regulated and Compliant Stablecoin such as USDC (Circle) solves the part SWIFT never could: instant, on-chain settlement.

Stablecoin Settlement revamping Trade and Tokenization

Stablecoin such as USDC is a digital token pegged to the US Dollar, still the most widely used currency for trade, enabling the movement of funds instantly 24*7 globally - transparently, instantly, and without the need for any intermediaries and the need to lock in trillions of dollars of idle cash.

Tokenized settlement replaces multi-day reconciliation with on-chain finality, reducing:

  • Dependency on intermediaries
  • Operational friction
  • Trillions locked in idle liquidity

For corporates trapped in long working capital cycles, this is transformative.

Digital dollars like USDC make the process simple:

Fiat → Stablecoin → On-Chain Transfer → Fiat

This hybrid model is already widely used across remittances, payouts, and treasury flows.

But one critical piece of global commerce is still lagging:

👉 Trade finance.

The Missing link is still Trade Finance Infrastructure.

While payments innovation has raced ahead, trade finance infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Document flows, letters of credit, and supply-chain financing remain siloed, paper-heavy, and operationally outdated.

This is exactly where the next breakthrough will happen - and why the recent XDC Network acquisition of Contour is a silent revolution.

It transforms to a new era of trade-driven liquidity through an end-to-end digital trade from shipping docs to payment confirmation – one infrastructure that powers all.

The breakthrough won’t come from payments alone — it will come from connecting trade finance to real-time settlement rails.

The XDC + Contour Shift: A Silent Revolution

  • Contour already connects global banks and corporates through digital LCs and digitized trade workflows.
  • XDC Blockchain brings a settlement layer built for speed, tokenization, and institutional-grade interoperability and ISO 20022 messaging compatibility

Contour’s digital letter of credit workflows will be integrated with XDC’s blockchain network to streamline trade documentation and settlement.

Together, they form the first end-to-end digital trade finance network linking:

Documentation → Validation → Settlement all under a single infrastructure.

XDC Ventures (XVC.TECH) is launching a Stable-Coin Lab to work with financial institutions on regulated stablecoin pilots for trade to deepen institutional trade-finance integration through launch of pilots with banks and corporates for regulated stable-coin issuance and settlement.

The Bottom Line

Payments alone won’t transform Global Trade Finance — Trade finance + Tokenized Settlement will.

This is the shift happening underway XDC Network's acquisition of Contour is the quiet catalyst.

Learn how trade finance is being revolutionised:

https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/xdc-ventures-acquires-contour-network-launches-stablecoin-lab-trade-finance-2025-10-22/

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Inside The Deal That Made Polymarket’s Founder One Of The Youngest Billionaires On Earth🌍

One year ago, the FBI raided Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan’s apartment. Now, the college dropout is a billionaire at age 27.

In July, Jeffrey Sprecher, the 70-year-old billionaire CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, sat at Manhatta, an upscale restaurant in the financial district overlooking the sprawling New York City skyline from the 60th floor. As a sommelier weaved through tables pouring wine, in walked Shayne Coplan—in a T-shirt and jeans, clutching a plastic water bottle and a paper bag with a bagel he’d picked up en route. Sprecher chuckles as he recalls his first impression of the boyish, eccentric entrepreneur: “An old bald guy that works at the New York Stock Exchange, where we require that you wear a suit and tie, next to a mop-headed guy in a T-shirt that's 27.” But Sprecher was fascinated by Polymarket, Coplan’s blockchain-based prediction market, and after dinner, he made his move: “I asked Shayne if he would consider selling us his company.”

Prediction markets like Polymarket let thousands of ordinary people bet on future events—the unemployment rate, say, or when BitCoin will hit an all-time high. In aggregate, prediction market bets have proven to be something of a crystal ball with the wisdom of the crowd often proving itself more prescient than expert opinion. For instance, Polymarket punters predicted that Trump would prevail in the 2024 presidential election, when many national pundits were sure that Kamala Harris would win.

Coplan initially turned down Sprecher’s buyout offer. But discussions led to negotiations and eventually a deal. In October, Intercontinental announced it had invested $2 billion for an up to 25% stake in the company, bringing the young solo founder the balance he was looking for. “We're consumer, we’re viral, we're culture. They’re finance, they’re headless and they’re infrastructure,” Coplan tells Forbes in a recent interview.

At the same time, Coplan announced investments from other billionaires including Figma’s Dylan Field, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Uber’s Travis Kalanick and hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin. A longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, Coplan even convinced lead singer Anthony Kiedis to invest after a mutual acquaintance brought the musician to Coplan’s apartment one day. “He's buzzing my door, and I’m like, ‘holy shit,'” Coplan recalls, his bright blue eyes widening. “I love their music. A lot of the inspiration [for my work] comes from the music that I listen to.”

Thanks to the deals, Polymarket’s valuation quickly shot to $9 billion, making the 2025 Under 30 alum the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, with an estimated 11% stake worth $1 billion. His reign was short: twenty days later, he was overtaken as the youngest by the three 22-year-old founders of AI startup Mercor.

Young entrepreneurs are minting ten-figure fortunes faster than ever. In addition to the Mercor trio and Coplan, 15 other Under 30 alumni—including ScaleAI cofounder Lucy Guo, Reddit’s Steve Huffman and Cursor’s cofounders—became billionaires this year, while Guo’s cofounder Alexandr Wang and Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev (both former Under 30 honorees) regained their billionaire status after having fallen out of the ranks.

The budding billionaire has long been fascinated by markets and tech. When he was just 14, Coplan emailed the regional Securities and Exchange Commission office to ask how to create new marketplaces. “I did not get a response, but it’s a really funny email,” he says, grinning playfully as he thinks of his younger self. “It just shows that this stuff takes over a decade of percolating in your mind.”

Two years later, Coplan showed up at the offices of internet startup Genius uninvited after multiple emails of his asking for an internship went ignored. At age 16—at least a decade younger than anyone in that office—he secured his first job after making a memorable impression with his “wild curls” and “encyclopedic knowledge of billionaire tech entrepreneurs.” “If he chooses to become a tech entrepreneur, which seems likely, I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing his name again in the press before long,” Chris Glazek, his manager at the time, wrote in Coplan’s college recommendation letter.

Coplan went on to study computer science at NYU, but dropped out in 2017 to work on various crypto projects that never took off. In 2020, he founded Polymarket to create a solution to the “rampant misinformation” he saw in the world: The company’s first market allowed users to bet on when New York City would reopen amid the pandemic. He soon expanded into elections and pop culture happenings, among other events.

But it didn’t take long for the company to butt heads with regulators. In January 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for offering unregistered markets. It was also ordered to block all U.S. users, but activity on Polymarket skyrocketed particularly during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with bets totaling $3.6 billion. A week after the election, the FBI raided Coplan's apartment and seized his devices as part of an investigation into a possible violation of this agreement. Shortly after, Coplan posted on his X account that he saw the raid as “a last-ditch effort” from the Biden administration “to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.”

In July, the Department of Justice and CFTC dropped the investigations—after which Sprecher reached out to Coplan for dinner—and less than a week later, Polymarket announced it had acquired CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCX to prepare for a compliant U.S. launch. QCX applied to be a federally-registered exchange in 2022—an application that was left dormant for three years before receiving approval less than two weeks before the acquisition was announced. When asked about the timing of the deal, Coplan points to CFTC acting chairwoman Caroline Pham, who President Trump tapped to lead the agency in January. “Caroline deserves a lot of credit for getting every single license that had been paused for no reason approved, as acting chairwoman in less than a year,” he says. Coplan had realized an acquisition might be the only way for Polymarket to legally operate in the U.S. as early as 2021 due to the lengthy federal approval process, a source familiar with the deal told Forbes.

Just two months after the acquisition and days after Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board, the company received federal approval to launch in the U.S. (Trump Jr. has also served as a strategic advisor to Polymarket’s main competitor Kalshi since January.)

Polymarket’s rapid rise has drawn critics. Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Washington-based financial advocacy group Better Markets, told Forbes in an email that the current administration’s deregulation around prediction markets has unlocked a regulatory “loophole” to enable “unregulated gambling” under the CFTC, “which has zero expertise, capacity or resources to regulate and police these markets.” Kelleher added that with backing from the Trump family “who are directly trying to profit on this new gambling den… the massive deregulation and crypto hysteria will almost certainly end badly for the American people.”

Investors and businesses are scrambling to seize the moment of deregulation. “We had opportunities to invest in events markets earlier, but there was a lot of risk,” Sprecher says, listing the regulatory changes in favor of crypto and prediction markets under the current administration. “This was the moment to invest if we wanted to still be early in the space.”

In the last few months, Trump’s Truth Social and sportsbook FanDuel, as well as cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com, Coinbase and Gemini all announced their own plans to offer prediction markets. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said prediction markets, which were integrated into its platform in March, were helping drive record activity for the retail brokerage in its third quarter earnings call.

“People are starting to realize right now that the opportunities are endless,” says Dubin, the billionaire hedge fund veteran who invested in Polymarket earlier this year. He points to sports betting companies, which have been regulated by states as gambling activity and taxed accordingly. States like New York can tax up to 51% of sportsbooks’ revenue, but federally-regulated prediction markets can bypass state laws, avoiding taxes and operating in all 50 states. With the realization that prediction markets could upend the sports betting industry—which brought in $13.7 billion in revenue in 2024—businesses are quickly jumping on board despite pushback from state gambling regulators. In October, both Polymarket and Kalshi secured partnerships with sportsbook PrizePicks and the National Hockey League, and Polymarket announced exclusive partnerships with sportsbook DraftKings and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The disruption won’t be limited to sports betting. Alongside its investment, Intercontinental’s tens of thousands of institutional clients including large hedge funds and over 750 third-party providers of data will soon have access to Polymarket data, as it gets integrated into Intercontinental’s products such as indices to better inform investment decisions. It also hopes to work with Polymarket to work on initiatives around tokenization—or converting financial assets into digital tokens on blockchain technology—to allow traders on Intercontinental’s exchanges to trade more flexibly at all hours of the day, Sprecher says. What’s more, in November, Google Finance announced it would integrate Polymarket and Kalshi data into its search results, while Yahoo Finance also announced an exclusive partnership with Polymarket.

Despite flashy investors, partnerships and a record $2.4 billion of trading volume in November, Polymarket has yet to launch in the U.S. or turn a profit. Coplan and his investors have hinted at ways the company could make money one day—selling its data, charging fees to users, launching a cryptocurrency token (similar to Ethereum or Bitcoin)—but decline to confirm any specifics. For now, the only thing that’s certain is the bet Coplan is making on himself. “Going for it and having it not pan out is an infinitely better outcome than living your life as a what if,” he says.

Standing across from the New York Stock Exchange building, Coplan tilts his head up as he watches a massive banner with Polymarket’s logo get hoisted onto the exterior of the building. It’s been five years since founding. One year since the FBI raid. He’s taking it all in. “Against all odds,” the bright blue banner reads, rippling in the wind alongside three American flags protruding from the building.

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Epstein-Linked Emails Expose Funding Ties to Bitcoin Core Development — Here Is What the Documents Reveal
  • Newly released emails show Jeffrey Epstein helped fund MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, which supported Bitcoin Core development.
  • The documents also confirm that Leon Black donated to MIT’s Media Lab through Epstein-directed channels.
  • The revelations reshape part of Bitcoin’s early institutional funding history and highlight long-hidden influence from controversial donors.

Newly unsealed emails from the House Oversight Committee have shed fresh light on Jeffrey Epstein’s hidden financial influence inside MIT’s Media Lab — and more importantly, how some of that money flowed into Bitcoin Core development. The correspondence reveals that Joichi Ito, then-director of the MIT Media Lab, relied on Epstein-connected “gift funds” to rapidly launch the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) in 2015, the research hub that became one of the primary sources of funding for Bitcoin’s core developers.

Emails Show Epstein-Connected Money Helped Launch MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative

In the newly surfaced emails, Ito directly thanked Epstein for the financial help that allowed MIT to “move quickly and win this round,” referring to the formation of DCI — a program explicitly designed to provide long-term support for Bitcoin Core contributors after the collapse of the Bitcoin Foundation. Ito’s forwarded message to Epstein described how the foundation’s implosion left core developers without stable funding, creating an opening for MIT to bring them under its umbrella.

He explained that three major developers — including Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields — agreed to join MIT, calling it “a big win for us.” The email also highlighted early support from prominent academics, including cryptographer Ron Rivest and IMF economist Simon Johnson. Epstein simply replied: “gavin is clever.”

Funding Numbers Reveal a Much Larger Financial Trail

MIT publicly claimed that Epstein donated $850,000 to the institution, with $525,000 flowing to the Media Lab. But journalist Ronan Farrow later reported the true figure was closer to $7.5 million — including a $5 million anonymous donation connected to Epstein associate Leon Black. The new emails appear to confirm that Black not only donated, but did so through Epstein’s direction.

One email from Ito to Epstein reads: “We were able to keep the Leon Black money, but the $25K from your foundation is getting bounced by MIT back to ASU.”

 

Epstein responded: “No problem — trying to get more black for you.”

The documents reveal Epstein’s influence reached deeper into Bitcoin circles than previously acknowledged, even including early conversations with Brock Pierce — another figure with documented ties to both Epstein and controversy surrounding early crypto foundations.

MIT’s Internal Concerns and the Fallout

The emails also expose MIT’s internal unease around anonymous or reputationally risky donations. After the scandal broke, Ito resigned in 2019. MIT later tightened donation policies, warning that “everything becomes public” eventually — a statement that now seems prophetic given this week’s disclosures.

Developers like Wladimir van der Laan say they were unaware of the extent of Epstein’s involvement and noted that DCI’s funding transparency “was not great back in the day.” The Media Lab and DCI declined to comment.

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