Good morning and welcome to Wednesday. Did you know that you can help shape our day-to-day coverage?

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In today’s newsletter:

• The DOJ seizes billions in stolen bitcoin
• Oscar nominations are out
• And how should online content moderation be handled?

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.82 minutes to read. Then get ready for a guessing game.

“We suffer more in imagination than reality.”

–Seneca (4 B.C. – 65 A.D.)

We’ve got two to report today:

1. We mistakenly said that Warner Bros. moved back the release date of The Matrix: Resurrections from April 2021 to late December. After postponing the film's original March 2020 debut, the studio actually moved its release date forward from April 2022 to December 2021.
2. It’s Margo Martindale, not Margot Martindale. (This one we caught in editing but a glitch caused the wrong copy to run. Sorry, BoJack Horseman fans.)

🪙 Heather Morgan, 31 years old, and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, were arrested in Manhattan yesterday for an alleged conspiracy to launder $4.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency stolen during the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

Officials also seized a crypto wallet with more than 94,000 bitcoin, valued at $3.6 billion. It's the DOJ’s largest seizure ever.

• Bitfinex, a Hong Kong-based digital-currency exchange, was hacked in 2016. The thieves made off with nearly 120,000 bitcoin, valued around $70 million at the time.
• The stolen bitcoin was funneled to a digital wallet being controlled by Mr. Lichtenstein. From there, the pair allegedly employed “numerous sophisticated laundering techniques” to wash the money before making a mistake last February.
• The techniques included using fictitious identities to set up online accounts, utilizing computer-based programs to automate transactions, and depositing stolen funds into accounts across multiple exchanges and darknet markets – a process commonly known as “layering” – to obfuscate the trail of the transaction history.

👀 Looking ahead… The pair face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for the money laundering charge, plus five more for conspiring to defraud the US government.

+Something ironic we found: You can read this article – published by Forbes in June 2020 and still live on their site – by Heather Morgan, titled “Tips to Protect Your Business from Cybercriminals.” (Tbh, she’s probably got some good tips.)

+Dig deeper: Read more about the accused Heather Morgan, a "Serial Entrepreneur, SaaS Investor and Surrealist" who also has a rapper alter ego named “Razzlekhan.

🤖🎶 Apple has acquired AI Music, a London-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized music, per Bloomberg. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

• AI Music uses its proprietary technology to create dynamic soundtracks using royalty-free music that changes based on user interaction.
• “Maybe you listen to a song and in the morning it might be a little bit more of an acoustic version. Maybe that same song when you play it as you’re about to go to the gym, it’s a deep-house or drum’n’bass version. And in the evening it’s a bit more jazzy. The song can actually shift itself,” said CEO Siavash Mahdavi in a 2017 interview.
• Other examples include workout music that can adjust its intensity based on a listener’s heartbeat, or a song in a video game that changes depending on the player’s mood.

+Zoom out: While relatively small, the deal is one of Apple’s few acquisitions as of late. The company dramatically decreased its spending in that area last year, shelling out just $33 million compared to $1.5 billion in 2020.

+Tap, tap, tap: Apple officially announced Tap to Pay yesterday, a feature that allows customers to pay for things by tapping their iPhone against a merchant's iPhone. (If you want some background, we recently wrote a story about it.)

🚛 A Canadian trucker protest forced the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit, MI, and Windsor, Canada, to shut down on Monday. The busiest border crossing in North America was temporarily closed overnight and into Tuesday before the jam was cleared.

• The self-titled Freedom Truck Convoy began late last month when hundreds of Canadian truckers gathered in Ottawa to protest a cross-border vaccine-or-quarantine mandate (despite the country’s trucking association saying an overwhelming majority of drivers are vaxxed).
• The daily demonstrations soon evolved to cover general anti-government sentiment, with some regular Canadians joining in to speak out against two years of pandemic restrictions.
• On Sunday, following a weekend of protests, Ottawa authorities declared a state of emergency and said the police were overwhelmed. To date, they’ve made 22 arrests, issued more than 1,300 tickets, and opened 79 criminal investigations.
• Yesterday, a judge ordered the truckers to cease honking their horns in the downtown area for 10 days, saying the demonstrators were infringing on “citizens’ right to quiet.”

+Funding un-secured: Last week, GoFundMe announced it was freezing over $9 million in donations earmarked for the trucker protests because the demonstrations go against its rules on violence and harassment.

The crowdfunding site initially said it would distribute the money to charities selected by the protest organizers, before reversing course and saying it would automatically refund donors after several GOP lawmakers threatened fraud investigations.

+Go deeper: From the Left | From the Right

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🎬🎥🍿 … and Netflix’s The Power of the Dog leads the pack with 12 total nods. Director Jane Campion made history, becoming the first woman to be nominated twice for Best Director.

• Dune secured 10 noms, and West Side Story and Belfast each earned seven – the middle one making Spielberg the first to be nominated for Best Director across six different decades (!).
• Netflix got a total of 27 nominations, down from its 36 last year, while Apple managed six, up from two. Amazon fell to just four, down from a dozen. Hulu matched last year’s total with one.
• Notable first-time nominees: Kirsten Dunst for Best Supporting Actress, Kristen Stewart for Best Actress, Beyoncé for Best Song, Jesse Plemons for Best Supporting Actor, and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson for Best Documentary. Actor Troy Kotsur also became the first deaf man nominated for an acting Oscar.

+Looking ahead… The ceremony will take place on Sunday, March 27. A host hasn’t been named yet.

+What we’re watching… Will people actually tune-in? Last year’s Oscars drew a record-low 9.85 million viewers, a 58% dropoff from 2020. In other words, 13.75 million less people tuned in last year.

+Dig deeper: See the full list of nominees.

💬 Quoted… "The issue is whether or not the RNC should be singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That's not the job of the RNC.”

• Context: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spoke out against the Republican National Committee’s decision to censure the two GOP members serving on the House’s January 6 committee. (From the Left | From the Right)

🔢 Stat of the day: The US trade deficit reached a record $859 billion last year, a 27% increase.

🤯 Did you know?… There are more native Spanish speakers in the United States than in Spain.

📖 Worth a read… A mathematical proof that Craig S. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto → (ZeMing M. Gao)

• 👆 NASA selected Lockheed Martin to build a small rocket capable of blasting off from the surface of Mars to carry rock samples and other materials back to Earth.
• 🚲 Peloton's big announcement: co-founder and CEO John Foley will be stepping down to become exec chairman, the company is laying off 2,800 employees, reducing its number of warehouses, and pulling the plug on its Ohio factory.
• 🏛️ Eric Lander resigned as head of the Biden administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy after a Politico report revealed he bullied colleagues. (From the Left | From the Right | The report)

There’s been a lot of discussion about censorship and free expression on the internet in the wake of the recent Joe Rogan situation. We’ve previously covered the laws governing how internet companies treat user-generated content, but decided to revisit the topic in light of recent events.

📜 The basics: The First Amendment protects individuals from government censorship. Social media platforms are private companies, so they can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit.

• But given their influential role in public discourse, many people – including some social media executives – are calling on Congress to update their regulations for online content moderation.

🇺🇸 How does it work right now?… In the US, social media companies and other online platforms are governed by a law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has two key subsections regarding user-generated posts:

1. Section 230(c)(1) gives online platforms legal immunity from content posted on their sites by third parties.
2. Section 230(c)(2) allows online platforms to police their sites for harmful content, but doesn’t require that they remove anything, and protects them from liability if they choose not to.

That second clause didn’t always exist – Congress added it in response to a 1995 court ruling that said platforms policing any user-generated content should be considered legally liable for all of the content posted to its site.

• Lawmakers believed the judge’s ruling would make platforms unwilling to police their sites for harmful content, so they added Section 230(c)(2) to encourage moderation.
• In 2018, Congress amended the law to remove platforms’ legal immunity from third-party content when it comes to sex-trafficking.

🏛️ What are some alternatives?... In recent years, Congress and the executive branch have proposed dozens of different bills that would alter the scope of Section 230.

• Some lawmakers are in favor of limiting platforms’ immunity from user-generated posts to encourage them to take down more undesirable content.
• Others are in favor of limiting platforms’ immunity for certain types of moderation decisions to encourage them to host more content.

+From the business world: In testimony before Congress last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued in favor of amending Section 230 to require platforms to have “adequate systems” in place to remove illegal content.

• Other social media CEOs said Congress should keep the law as is to avoid unintended consequences in harming free expression.

📜 Background: On Monday, we covered what it might take for Covid to transition from a pandemic to an endemic disease, meaning its impact is considered “manageable.”

🤔 Our question: When do you think the pandemic will be “over”?

The pandemic is already “over”

Sometime this year

Sometime in 2023

In 2024 or later

+Note: A written response isn't required – all you need to do is click one of the links above, and your vote is recorded. Poll results and the best comments for each response will be featured in tomorrow's newsletter.

A new fashion co-op in Chicago is changing the way people view the industry.

Immigrant women, who are often exploited by big fashion labels, are at the forefront of Blue Tin Productions. The co-op's mission is to "flip the script in fashion supply chains" by working towards abolishing sweatshops and replacing them with empowered garment workers.

🪡 Onwards and upwards... Blue Tin is currently undergoing a major expansion and plans to move into a 11,250 square foot warehouse to support even more designers and fashion workers.

👆 Can you guess the headline to the news story that went along with this photo?

1. Students begin protest after chocolate milk is banned at school
2. Elementary school reenacts Vietnam War protests as part of history class
3. “Summer school shouldn’t exist”, kids’ protest halts school
4. Dalton Middle School wins regional quiz bowl title, heads to nationals next week

(keep scrolling for the answer)

If all the US states were placed in alphabetical order, which one would be first and which one would be last?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

Check out our referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to this newsletter. 👇

Here’s your unique link to copy & send to anyone you think would like the DONUT:

Dose of Knowledge:

Alabama and Wyoming

Guess the headline:

The correct answer is #1, "Students begin protest after chocolate milk is banned at school."

Read the story here.