Today in crypto, Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov claims he rejected pressure from French intelligence officials to censor conservative content tied to the president elections in Romania, retired artist Ed Suman lost over $2 million in crypto after falling victim to a Coinbase impersonation scam, Moody’s degrades US credit rating.
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov resists French pressure to censor Romanian election content
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov claims that he rejected requests from a high-ranking French intelligence official to censor pro-conservative voices and content on the Telegram messaging platform ahead of the presidential elections in Romania.
Durov did not immediately name the French government in his initial Telegram post but later confirmed that it was French intelligence services that approached him. Durov wrote in a May 18 X post:
"This spring, at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused. We did not block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran — We won’t start doing it in Europe."
Durov continues to be an outspoken advocate for free speech, autonomy, privacy, and individual liberty, despite repeated threats and legal action from state officials.
Retired artist loses $2M in crypto to Coinbase impersonator
Retired artist Ed Suman lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency earlier this year after falling victim to a scam involving someone posing as a Coinbase support representative.
Suman, 67, spent nearly two decades as a fabricator in the art world, helping build high-profile works such as Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog sculptures, according to a May 17 report by Bloomberg.
After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin and 225 Ether — a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings.
He stored the funds in a Trezor Model One, a hardware wallet commonly used by crypto holders to avoid the risks of exchange hacks. But in March, Suman received a text message appearing to be from Coinbase, warning him of unauthorized account access.
After responding, he got a phone call from a man identifying himself as a Coinbase security staffer named Brett Miller. The caller appeared knowledgeable, correctly stating that Suman’s funds were stored in a hardware wallet.
He then convinced Suman that his wallet could still be vulnerable and walked him through a “security procedure” that involved entering his seed phrase into a website mimicking Coinbase’s interface.
Nine days later, a second caller claiming to be from Coinbase repeated the process. By the end of that call, all of Suman’s crypto holdings were gone.
Moody's rating agency degrades US credit rating
Moody's, one of the major credit ratings agencies, downgraded the US government's creditworthiness from Aaa to Aa1 on May 16, citing increased deficits and a mounting national debt.
According to the announcement, the agency forecasts higher US government debt, fueled by increasing interest expense on the debt, and a lack of cost-cutting measures curtailing government spending. The report noted:
"Over the next decade, we expect larger deficits as entitlement spending rises while government revenue remains broadly flat. In turn, persistent, large fiscal deficits will drive the government's debt and interest burden higher."
"The US' fiscal performance is likely to deteriorate relative to its own past and compared to other highly-rated sovereigns," the newly revised credit outlook predicted.
