Axios

Crypto investor Avraham Eisenberg put $13 million on the line in his Mango Markets trade, his defense counsel argued today, and his $110 million take was never a sure thing.

Why it matters: To get a conviction in its criminal fraud case, the government will have to show that Eisenberg both had knowledge that he was acting illicitly and that the laws he has been charged under actually apply to decentralized finance (DeFi).

Crypto's obsession with investment wrappers was on display in the most recent head fake around an ether ETF decision.

Why it matters: The Securities and Exchange Commission last week started soliciting public comment on proposals for exchange traded funds from Bitwise, Fidelity and Grayscale, leading to another round of speculation on the odds of a regulatory approval in May.

Just-in-time manufacturing is back — and not a moment too soon.

• The pandemic wrecked supply chains, undermining the once-seemingly foolproof strategy of scheduling production as soon as components arrived on site.

The big picture: Consultancy KPMG's monthly Supply Chain Stability Index — made with the Association for Supply Chain Management — shows a decline in the initial months of 2024 to the lowest point since February 2021.

Structural problems within Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and 777 jets could cause the aircraft to suddenly fail, the attorneys of a former Boeing engineer alleged on Tuesday.

Why it matters: The allegations, which were first published by the New York Times, heighten the widespread safety crisis at Boeing set off by a mid-flight blowout with one of its 737 MAX 9 jets earlier this year.

Ohio is a force of nature.

Ohio has long been a leader across life sciences, technology, industrial innovation and R&D in the U.S. with…

This has been a period of uncommon unanimity among Fed policymakers, with no formal dissents at a monetary policy meeting in nearly two years. But that could soon change.

Why it matters: An increasingly vocal bloc of monetary hawks is expressing wariness of plans to cut interest rates in the near term. That may complicate plans to shift toward easier policy.

A trial kicked off Monday in federal court for a crypto trader and a strategy he employed that prosecutors allege was a $110 million theft.

Why it matters: The defense team for Avraham Eisenberg is being touchy about how the suggestion of market manipulation might come up in his trial, and shows every sign of arguing that, on blockchains — what's allowed by the software that runs a marketplace is, in fact, allowed.

Rail operator Norfolk Southern said Tuesday that it had reached a $600 million class-action settlement over the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment in February 2023.

Why it matters: The disaster sparked concerns about hazardous chemicals injuring residents on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and called attention to Norfolk Southern's safety record.

The International Monetary Fund has quietly been assessing enormous surcharges on its largest borrowers for years, to build up its capital base. Now that its funds are set to reach their target level, a group of U.S. lawmakers is introducing a bill seeking to effectively abolish the surcharges altogether, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The IMF, as a so-called super-senior creditor, always gets repaid — and therefore takes much less credit risk than other lenders. All the same, it now charges its largest borrowers — Argentina, Ukraine, and some 20 other countries — as much as 8.6% in their first year, declining only a little to 8.1% in year four.