Crypto News: Leak scandal grows

The use of a commercial mobile phone app by US President Donald Trump's closest aides to transmit secret details of a planned military attack, all while including a journalist on the exchange, further bedeviled the administration Wednesday. Even a few members of Trump's own party started making noise about a potential investigation as more facts were revealed. The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, accidentally invited to the chat by US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, published the full exchange after Trump and his aides spent a day arguing the details of the active military operation weren't classified. On the chat, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth laid out precise timing for strikes on Yemen that, had they been intercepted, could have endangered the lives of military personnel. (Dozens of Yemenis were reportedly killed in the US attack on Houthi rebels.) Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's national intelligence director, also was on the chat. Both she and Hegseth faced difficult nomination hearings despite Republican control of the Senate due to their lack of traditional experience for their current roles. Hegseth, a former National Guard infantry officer and weekend cable television host, continued to deny war plans were discussed despite the now-public transcript. "Nobody's texting war plans," the 44-year-old Hegseth said Wednesday. "You know who sees war plans? I see them."

From left, US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office on March 13. Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images North America

While the leak debacle gripped Washington and the newschannels, the Trump administration continued its campaign to cut government staffing as well as taxpayer-funded Congressional mandates. From state healthcare research to vaccines for millions around the world, billions of dollars in allocated funds were sought to be eliminated, moves that are sure to trigger yet more litigation. And last night, Trump teed up another issue likely to be decided by the Supreme Court when he issued an executive order aimed at regulating elections. It was seen as another facially illegal broadside since, as legal experts quickly noted, such regulation is largely the province of the states. —David E. Rovella

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Three days of relative peace were broken on Wall Street, with big tech driving major stock benchmarks lower as concern grows about Trump's trade war and its impact on the economy and inflation. The S&P 500 fell more than 1%, a slide led by the megacaps known as the "Magnificent Seven" and whose quarterly selloff is shaping up to be the worst since 2022. Nvidia and Tesla dropped at least 5.5%. The Nasdaq 100 slipped around 2% and a gauge of big banks snapped a streak of eight straight days of gains. Stocks kept on falling after markets closed as Trump rolled out new tariff threats—these set for April 2 against auto imports at a rate of 25%. Here's your markets wrap.

Worries over the economic effects of the global trade war are sapping liquidity in US stocks, and that's not good news. Liquidity—the ease of buying or selling an asset without affecting its price—has been dwindling for years due to factors such as tighter regulations and the rise of automatic trading. Now, tariff concerns have introduced a new wrinkle, stoking gyrations in individual stocks that have made it harder for institutions to trade in size. The phenomenon can be seen in a pair of widely tracked liquidity measures: Liquidity in S&P 500 stock-index futures, as measured in the most active contract, stands at a two-year low. Meanwhile, the five-day moving average of Citigroup's liquidity index, which is based on futures volumes for the S&P 500, is also hovering near its lowest level in two years.

Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok-owner ByteDance, has become China's wealthiest person. Zhang topped the list on Wednesday, surpassing bottled water tycoon Zhong Shanshan and Tencent Holdings co-founder Ma Huateng with a $57.5 billion fortune. The tech tycoon emerged as No. 1 after Zhong's wealth was knocked back by an earnings slowdown at his company, Nongfu Spring. Zhang ranks as Asia's third richest person after India's Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. For the 41-year-old, it's a remarkable turn of events after a tumultuous period involving the US ban on TikTok (since discarded by Trump despite it being federal law) and the world's biggest record label pulling music for a time from the social-media platform.

JPMorgan Says Quantum Experiment Generated Truly Random Numbers

The bank certified the breakthrough using a quantum computer, a first that could have applications for security and trading.

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Charlie Javice committed "brazen fraud" when she sold her student-finance company Frank to JPMorgan based on inflated user numbers, a federal prosecutor said during closing arguments at the startup founder's trial. The trial of Javice, 32, and her co-defendant, former Frank chief growth officer Olivier Amar, began to wrap up Wednesday after more than a month of testimony in Manhattan federal court. The two are charged with lying and creating fake data showing Frank had more than 4.25 million customers, when it actually had fewer than 300,000, to convince JPMorgan to buy the company at a higher price. The case is expected to go to the jury on Thursday.

Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, arrives at federal court in New York last week. Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg

Discord, the social communications platform popular with video-game players and programmers, is now working with Wall Street. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are said to be teaming up with the company on an initial public offering. Discord could seek a stock market listing as soon as this year. Founded in 2015, the San Francisco-based platform was originally a voice and text chat app for gamers to discuss their strategies. Its popularity soared during the pandemic, and in 2021, it rejected a $12 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Discord has raised $1.1 billion in financing to date and was last valued at $14.7 billion after a funding round in 2021.