Melbourne entrepreneur builds $3b gaming empire out of solitaire app
Chameides and his two co-founders not only proved the theory, they smashed it out of the park. Their business, Tripledot Studios, which started up in 2017, is already worth about $US2 billion ($3.1 billion)
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The Age
2 days ago
- The Age
Trump's marquee bill passes Senate as feud with Musk roars back to life
That animosity roared back into life in the past 48 hours as the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss again tried to derail passage of what he called an 'insane spending bill' that would deepen US debt. Musk has amplified and encouraged a number of Republican holdouts, including Thomas Massie, a member of the House of Representatives, and Senator Rand Paul, another fiscal hawk who opposes higher spending and raising the debt ceiling. 'What's the point of a debt ceiling if we keep raising it?' Musk asked overnight. 'Hitting the debt ceiling is the only thing that will actually force the government to cut waste and fraud.' Since stepping away from his White House role running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk had vowed to abandon political campaigning and spending, having bankrolled Trump and Republican candidates to the tune of nearly $US300 million last year. But he now says he will ensure sitting Republicans lose their primaries (preslections) at next year's midterm elections 'if it is the last thing I do on this earth'. Musk added: 'If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.' In response, Trump suggested the DOGE cost-cutting razor gang would investigate federal subsidies handed to Musk's companies Tesla and SpaceX. 'Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump posted on TruthSocial. 'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.' Asked on Tuesday morning, Washington time, whether he wanted to deport Musk, Trump replied nonchalantly: 'We'll have to take a look.' He added: 'We might have to put DOGE on Elon. Do you know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible?' Later, while opening a new immigration detention centre in Florida dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz', Trump said: 'DOGE is going to look at Musk. And if DOGE looks at Musk, we're going to save a fortune. I don't think he should be playing that game with me.' The intense feud illustrates the high-stakes nature of the battle to pass the bill through two chambers where Republicans hold only a slight majority. But Musk has so far failed to destroy the bill, underscoring his waning influence in Washington. The White House denies the bill adds to the deficit, pointing to savings measures of $US2 trillion. It asserts the overall US budget position will improve due to economic growth, which it thinks will be higher than numerous experts predict. The Republicans are also using abnormal accounting practices to argue that extending the tax cuts does not count as a new cost. Loading 'The Crooked Budget Office has a terrible record with its predictions and hasn't earned the attention the media gives it,' the White House said. Trump wants to sign the bill into law by a self-imposed deadline of July 4 – Independence Day – and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson promised it would be ready in time. 'Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending and return to a government that puts Americans first,' Johnson said. As for deporting Musk, that seems highly unlikely, as the Tesla and SpaceX boss has held US citizenship since 2002. He is also a citizen of South Africa and Canada. However, the Trump administration has indicated a new interest in stripping people of citizenship. In June, the Justice Department issued a memo directing its attorneys to prioritise denaturalisation proceedings 'in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence'. Among the cases the department wants to prioritise are people who acquired their citizenship through fraud or misrepresentation, as well as 'any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue'.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Trump's marquee bill passes Senate as feud with Musk roars back to life
That animosity roared back into life in the past 48 hours as the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss again tried to derail passage of what he called an 'insane spending bill' that would deepen US debt. Musk has amplified and encouraged a number of Republican holdouts, including Thomas Massie, a member of the House of Representatives, and Senator Rand Paul, another fiscal hawk who opposes higher spending and raising the debt ceiling. 'What's the point of a debt ceiling if we keep raising it?' Musk asked overnight. 'Hitting the debt ceiling is the only thing that will actually force the government to cut waste and fraud.' Since stepping away from his White House role running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk had vowed to abandon political campaigning and spending, having bankrolled Trump and Republican candidates to the tune of nearly $US300 million last year. But he now says he will ensure sitting Republicans lose their primaries (preslections) at next year's midterm elections 'if it is the last thing I do on this earth'. Musk added: 'If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.' In response, Trump suggested the DOGE cost-cutting razor gang would investigate federal subsidies handed to Musk's companies Tesla and SpaceX. 'Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump posted on TruthSocial. 'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.' Asked on Tuesday morning, Washington time, whether he wanted to deport Musk, Trump replied nonchalantly: 'We'll have to take a look.' He added: 'We might have to put DOGE on Elon. Do you know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible?' Later, while opening a new immigration detention centre in Florida dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz', Trump said: 'DOGE is going to look at Musk. And if DOGE looks at Musk, we're going to save a fortune. I don't think he should be playing that game with me.' The intense feud illustrates the high-stakes nature of the battle to pass the bill through two chambers where Republicans hold only a slight majority. But Musk has so far failed to destroy the bill, underscoring his waning influence in Washington. The White House denies the bill adds to the deficit, pointing to savings measures of $US2 trillion. It asserts the overall US budget position will improve due to economic growth, which it thinks will be higher than numerous experts predict. The Republicans are also using abnormal accounting practices to argue that extending the tax cuts does not count as a new cost. Loading 'The Crooked Budget Office has a terrible record with its predictions and hasn't earned the attention the media gives it,' the White House said. Trump wants to sign the bill into law by a self-imposed deadline of July 4 – Independence Day – and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson promised it would be ready in time. 'Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending and return to a government that puts Americans first,' Johnson said. As for deporting Musk, that seems highly unlikely, as the Tesla and SpaceX boss has held US citizenship since 2002. He is also a citizen of South Africa and Canada. However, the Trump administration has indicated a new interest in stripping people of citizenship. In June, the Justice Department issued a memo directing its attorneys to prioritise denaturalisation proceedings 'in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence'. Among the cases the department wants to prioritise are people who acquired their citizenship through fraud or misrepresentation, as well as 'any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue'.
The Age
7 days ago
- The Age
The Genius move that could blow up in America's face
There are already about $US250 billion of stablecoins on issue but, assuming the House endorses the bill (it has previously passed a slightly different version, named the STABLE Act) the legislation is likely to encourage a flood of new issuers. Amazon and Walmart and other retailers, large and small, are said to be preparing to issue their own tokens, along with other participants in payment chains. The major US banks have talked about creating one, the big tech companies would inevitably become involved and, as with the Trumps, there'd be a host of entrepreneurial types entering the sector. A report by Citigroup earlier this year said there could be $US3.7 trillion of stablecoins on issue by 2030, while a US Treasury analysis estimated there'd be $US2 trillion on issue by 2028. The potential benefits of wide use of stablecoins are obvious. They'd cut out the middlemen of finance – the crypto universe is a peer-to-peer one – making merchant fees, interchange fees and wire transfer fees increasingly redundant, along with the waiting for funds to be cleared. That explains retailers' interest in them, and the threat they pose to the major credit and debit card operators. US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, is also enthusiastic about what they might mean for the US dollar and US Treasury market. Loading The dollar and US Treasury securities are already the most common assets used to back stablecoins and could be expected to be the assets of choice for tokens issued within the framework established by the Genius Act. That would provide a massive new source of demand for the dollar and Treasury securities, buttressing the dollar's global dominance and lowering the US government's cost of funds, or at least that's Bessent's theory. In practice, most of the funds to provide the dollar-for-dollar backing for the stablecoins would probably come from traditional finance sources – banks and money market funds being the most obvious. The flows of US dollar assets would be redirected, rather than new sources tapped. That's an important point, because it means deposits could be withdrawn from highly-regulated and, for deposits of less than $US250,000 in the US, insured environments into one that is far less onerously regulated and where the funds would not be insured. Unlike bank deposits, where the Federal Reserve Board backstops the system, there would be no lender of last resort (one of the BIS criticisms), fewer protections against the use of the tokens for illicit activities (another) and they don't have the capacity that banks have to create money (yet another weakness identified by the BIS). Unlike a US dollar, which is trusted and accepted almost universally, there is no guarantee that a $US1 dollar stablecoin will actually be worth a dollar, or be accepted by everyone as a medium of exchange. If the forecasts of the extent to which the stablecoin issuance could grow are correct, they could have an impact on the stability of the US and potentially other banking systems. They would convert largely retail deposits, which are generally stable and are covered by federal insurance, into more volatile and uninsured wholesale deposits. The regional banking crisis in the US in 2023 was triggered by a run on Silicon Valley Bank's wholesale deposits. Under the Genius Act, stablecoin issuers would be required to hold $US1 of easily cashable assets for each $US1 of stablecoins. It's relatively easy for the issuers to acquire US Treasury bills, or repurchase agreements backed by Treasury securities or cash to match new deposits. If there were, however, a sudden flood of redemption requests and a need to cash out the underlying assets urgently – if the issuer had to dump assets to raise cash in the face of what, in a bank, would be a 'run' – there would be a likelihood of losses on the face value of the Treasury bills and other assets in a forced sale. Some existing stablecoins have traded well below par. With no guarantor or lender of last resort, any liquidity event in a stablecoin would spark a frenetic scramble for the exit by investors, exacerbating the losses and raising the spectre of contagion for the rest of the sector. While the Genius Act makes it explicit that the stablecoins wouldn't be guaranteed by the government or have access to the Fed's facilities, if there were a sector-wide implosion and trillions of dollars of Treasury securities and bank deposits were being dumped into the markets, the pressure for the White House to intervene would be extreme. It would be even more extreme if the president at that moment had a multi-billion exposure to the stablecoin market. The act prohibits members of Congress or the US executive branch from owning or issuing stablecoins, but an attempt by the Democrats to include the president and vice president in that prohibition failed. The other major criticism of the act is that it could create a 'back to the future' moment, a return to a 19th century America where almost anyone could open a bank and issue their own currency as long as they had a dollar of collateral for each dollar they issued. Unlike a US dollar, which is trusted and accepted almost universally, there is no guarantee that a $US1 dollar stablecoin will actually be worth a dollar, or be accepted by everyone as a medium of exchange. Fiat currencies are fungible, crypto assets are not. Each stablecoin could be backed by a different mix of assets and therefore their vulnerability to an external event, or ability to respond to a run, will differ between issuers. Loading Short of real time continuous auditing of every stablecoin issuer, there can't be the same level of trust that there is in the traditional banking and payment systems. By endorsing and providing credibility for stablecoins, however, the US lawmakers are bringing crypto into the mainstream of the US banking and payments systems, fragmenting them to at least some degree and introducing a potential new source of instability.
