Best of Web: Tether Billions, mRNA Vaccine Pioneer, Searching For Mr. X, Theranos Final Chapter, 2021 Global Photo Winners

Here is another post with five Best of Web links from around the web: The best investigative piece on a crypto related company claiming it has $69 billion in offshore banks that no one can locate, the scientist who was instrumental in bringing to humanity the mRNA vaccines who just likes to do scientific things and avoid fame and stuff like that, an extensive interview with the journalist who blew up the Theranos company and is now covering the trials of its top two executives, an amazing story about who was Mr. X that I could not stop reading because I love stories like this and of course we end with some amazing photography again. See you Wednesday…I think.

TBB Blog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Inspire. In That Order!

Support TBB by applying for CREDIT CARDS or visiting our LINKS or Donate

You like my blog? Send a link to someone please!

 

The Best of Web posts are much shorter in length with material that is a notch or two above what you see in the regular TBB posts.

Sometimes you can pull up the pay-walled article using Archive.is site.

Click on the headline for the link!

 

Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions

A wild search for the U.S. dollars supposedly backing the stablecoin at the center of the global cryptocurrency trade—and in the crosshairs of U.S. regulators and prosecutors.

Archived Link. If you had ever associated crypto currencies with fraud no one will be upset with you. I think they are a feature. And then you get some companies that are just so blatant about it that you scratch your head. This story is wild and it is not like someone just discovered it. Tether has been pretty much a fraud for years and yet the regulators are moving so slow it is beyond preposterous. Kudos to the investigative journalist who looked at this deeper than anyone else, thank you.

Tether is what’s come to be known in financial circles as a stablecoin—stable because one Tether is supposed to be backed by one dollar… But it’s actually more like a bank…Exactly how Tether is backed, or if it’s truly backed at all, has always been a mystery.

Then, this year, Tether Holdings started putting out a huge amount of digital coins. There are now 69 billion Tethers in circulation, 48 billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding $69 billion in real money to back the coins—an amount that would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the U.S., if it were a U.S. bank and not an unregulated offshore company.

And let me stop there and let the author go on a pretty wild trip, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

So earlier this year I set out to solve the mystery. The money trail led from Taiwan to Puerto Rico, the French Riviera, mainland China, and the Bahamas. 

 

A scientific hunch. Then silence. Until the world needed a lifesaving vaccine

Drew Weissman helped make ‘hugs and closeness possible again.’ It didn’t happen overnight.

Archived Link. This article is about Drew Weissman who worked closely with Katalin Kariko and they are the primary scientists responsible for the life saving mRNA vaccines for the coronavirus the world has been dealing with. And he is an interesting dude, going about his craft and not looking for the fame. Actually, I had not heard of him until now lol.

For more than two decades, Weissman and Kariko worked shoulder-to-shoulder at the lab bench to turn messenger RNA, the genetic instruction books that tell cells how to build proteins, into medicine. If DNA is the blueprint of life, messenger RNA is the work order that makes it happen. They were convinced this natural process could be harnessed to revolutionize how vaccines are made and transform how diseases are treated.

And they met at the copier making copies, wow!

Enjoy learning about him and maybe feel more thankful for science!

Ok, one more excerpt: