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Technology

Laptop buying guide: 5 things to know before investing

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Are you thinking about investing in a new laptop? I assume you are if you clicked to read this article. They come in a wide variety of sizes, features, and prices, making choosing the best one a challenge.

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That’s why you need to figure out what your needs are. I’ve put together this laptop buying guide to help narrow down your options.

No matter what model you get, laptops are expensive.
(Kurt Knutsson)

1. Don’t let price be the deciding factor

No matter what model you get, laptops are expensive. With this in mind, some people will immediately choose the cheapest option. In contrast, others might do the opposite and go for the most costly model, assuming that anything that expensive must be the best.

No matter which side of the coin you might be on, choosing your laptop based on price alone is almost guaranteed to end in disappointment. 

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Budget laptops come with minimal storage and, without several necessary features for your work, might not be the right fit. 

While the most expensive often include features you will never, as well as an abundance of storage that will go unfilled.

Rather than choose the least or most expensive, instead, you should:

  • Set a maximum budget
  • Assess your current needs and things you hope your new model will have
  • Find a device that checks off all or most of your needs and is still within your budget

QUICK CHECK TO SEE IF SOMEONE IS SPYING ON YOUR COMPUTER

2. Always try it before you buy

Whether you are a first-time laptop owner or simply upgrading to a newer device, giving your new computer a test drive is always a good idea before deciding to buy it. 

It’s important to note that nearly all brick-and-mortar tech stores, including the Apple Store, the Microsoft Store, and Best Buy allow you to test out their devices. This will enable you to:

  • See if the features are to your liking
  • Get a feel for the keyboard, touchpad, and interface
  • Make sure it is the size and weight you are looking for

If the store, for some reason, does not allow you to test it out, or if you buy it online, double-check the return policy before purchasing it, and make sure it is reasonable.

3. Be mindful of compatibility

One of the increasingly common mistakes when purchasing a laptop is not double-checking port compatibility. Today, most laptops use USB-C ports, while you still might have several devices which use USB-A ports.

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True, this incompatibility problem could be solved by purchasing a dongle. However, rather than spend more money, it’s a good idea to check if your computer ports are compatible with most devices you know you’ll be using.

It’s a good idea to check if your computer ports are compatible with most devices you know you’ll be using.
(Kurt Knutsson)

4. Plan for the long haul

Like making a decision based purely on price, don’t be too hasty buying a laptop based on your current needs because you’ll want your computer to last at least a few years. So before making the purchase, it’s always wise to:

  • Take a look at your current device’s storage and features
  • Determine how many of its applications and services you are using
  • Figure out what you’ll need to suit you in the next few years

You don’t necessarily need to get the most advanced, up-to-date model; however, you should always be buying one which will at least be an improvement over your current device and allow you for growth for all your future needs.

HOW TO TURN ON THE KEYBOARD LIGHT ON YOUR MAC

5. Size does matter

You should always think of Goldilocks when choosing a laptop. Depending on your taste, some might be too big, others too small, leading you to want the “just right” model for you.

This can be pretty quickly determined by a few factors:

  • If you’ll be using it more on the go or at home
  • Where you plan to use it, and/or what you plan to carry it in
  • Your requirements for visibility and typing.

Suppose you plan on using your laptop pretty much exclusively at home. In that case, a sturdy device measuring 15 inches or more will likely suit your needs more, as long as you have space on your desk or wherever you plan on working. 

ASK KURT: CAN I LEAVE MY COMPUTER IN SLEEP MODE, OR SHOULD I SHUT IT DOWN?

These devices might not fit into your backpack or carrier of choice, and if they weigh about 10 or so pounds, your shoulders will not be appreciative.

If you work more frequently on the go, a smaller device, measuring around 11 inches or so, might be more to your liking. However, as stated before buying it, best to try it out first, as you might find yourself having trouble typing on the smaller keyboard; making a device lying somewhere right in the middle is the best way to go.

If you work more frequently on the go, a smaller device, measuring around 11 inches or so, might be more to your liking.
(Kurt Knutsson)

Of course, the most significant overall mistake anyone can make when buying a new laptop is deciding based on only one factor. It’s essential to consider your multiple needs and reasons for buying before making your final decision. Considering these five factors, you’re guaranteed to bring home a device that will keep you satisfied in the immediate future.

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Copyright 2023 CyberGuy.com.  All rights reserved.  CyberGuy.com articles and content may contain affiliate links that earn a commission when purchases are made.

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

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Business

Goldman Sachs Lost $3 Billion on Consumer Lending Push

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Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

GS 1.10%

said a big chunk of its consumer lending business has lost about $3 billion since 2020, revealing for the first time the costly toll of the Wall Street giant’s Main Street push. 

Ahead of fourth-quarter earnings next week, Goldman released financial information that reflects its new reporting structure. The bank in October announced a sweeping reorganization that combined its flagship investment-banking and trading businesses into one unit, while merging asset and wealth management into another.

Marcus, Goldman’s consumer-banking arm, launched in 2016 to a strong start.

Rivals

JPMorgan Chase

& Co. and

Bank of America Corp.

were posting big profits on the back of strong consumer businesses that carried them through rocky stretches in their Wall Street operations. Goldman, long reliant on its gold-plated investment banking and trading arms, wanted in on the action.

The bank rolled out savings accounts, personal loans and credit cards. Its 2019 credit-card partnership with

Apple Inc.

signaled its ambitions to be a big player in the business.

Goldman invested billions of dollars in Marcus. But it struggled to bulk up the credit-card business following an early win with the Apple Card. A long-awaited checking account never materialized.

Economists and financial analysts look at bank earnings to get a sense of the economy’s health. WSJ’s Telis Demos explains how inflation as well as recession concerns can be reflected in their results. Illustration: Lorie Hirose

The consumer unit was never profitable. In October, Goldman formally scaled back its plan to bank the masses.

The reshuffling parceled out the consumer business to different parts of the bank.

Before the shift, it was under the same umbrella as Goldman’s wealth-management division. 

Much of Marcus will be folded into Goldman’s new asset and wealth management unit. Some pieces, including its credit-card partnerships with Apple and

General Motors Co.

, as well as specialty lender GreenSky, are moving into a new unit called Platform Solutions.

Goldman on Friday disclosed that its Platform Solutions unit lost $1.2 billion on a pretax basis in the nine months that ended in September 2022. It lost slightly more than $1 billion in 2021 and $783 million in 2020, after accounting for operating expenses and money set aside to cover possible losses on loans. The unit also includes transaction banking, with services such as enabling banks to send payments to each other, vendors and elsewhere.

Goldman shares closed up about 1% Friday at $374.

The bank said it set aside $942 million during the first nine months of 2022 for credit losses in Platform Solutions, up 35% from full-year 2021. Operating expenses for the division increased 27% during this period. After hovering around record lows for much of the pandemic, consumer delinquencies are rising across the industry.

Net revenue for Platform Solutions’ consumer platforms segment, which reflects credit cards and GreenSky, totaled $743 million during the first nine months of 2022, up 75% from all of 2021 and up 295% from 2020. Goldman completed its acquisition of GreenSky last year. 

The disclosure didn’t reveal financial details for Goldman’s consumer deposit accounts, personal loans and other parts of Marcus. Those business lines are included in the firm’s asset and wealth management division, which is profitable, and aren’t material to the firm’s overall profits, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Goldman is in the process of winding down personal loans, according to people familiar with the matter. It will be ending its checking account pilot for employees, one of the people said, while it considers other ways to offer the product. One possible option is pitching the checking account to workplace and personal-wealth clients.

As recently as the summer, Goldman executives were saying the checking account would unlock new business opportunities for the bank. 

Marcus has been a divisive topic at Goldman. Some partners, senior executives and investors were against continuing to pour billions of dollars into the effort, in particular for checking accounts and other products that Goldman would be developing on its own.

Write to AnnaMaria Andriotis at annamaria.andriotis@wsj.com and Charley Grant at charles.grant@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Elon Musk Sends Subtle Message to Disenchanted Tesla Shareholders

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Elon Musk is used to facing critics, haters and detractors. 

He even likes these battles very much. 

Sometimes he even tends to provoke his supposed enemies. The Techno King, as he’s known at Tesla  (TSLA) – Get Free Report, likes to turn his opponents’ attacks into counterattacks. The serial entrepreneur is never as lethal as when he is on defense. 

These adversaries he knows them. He knows their angles of attack. Certainly some of these criticisms annoy him but he always finds the line of response to repel the detractors.

He can also count on his legion of fans, many of whom are Tesla die-hard fans. They believe in his promises of transforming the world and beyond our civilization. They applaud his iconoclastic side and do not hesitate to cry genius when he announces a new product. The billionaire always knew he could count on these admirers. 

The Revolt of the Retail Investor

But what he never anticipated was that some of these fans would come after him. He therefore never prepared for it because he always counted on their loyalty to him. It turns out that Musk was wrong. 

For several weeks now, the CEO of Tesla has been the target of repeated criticism from some retail investors. Investor Leo KuGuan, who is the car maker’s third largest individual shareholder after Musk and Oracle  (ORCL) – Get Free Report co-founder Larry Ellison, went so far as to sound a revolt against Musk.

“I am 100% in Tesla bc I believe in Elon Musk and Tesla,” KoGuan wrote on Twitter on Jan. 7. “But he is killing SH and Tesla. If I knew I wouldn’t invest in Tesla.”

“Elon invested ≈$200mm but took out $40B, Larry invested $1B, I invested over $3B, I have no choice but to act and speak out. I cry out to U for help!”

The criticisms of these investors are the consequence of Tesla’s stock market rout. In 2022, Tesla stock lost 65% of its value, translating to more than $600 billion in market capitalization evaporated in a year. Tesla’s market value is currently $357 billion, down from over $1 trillion at the start of 2022. Over the first four trading sessions of 2023, Tesla shares lost 8.2% to $113.06.

While Musk attributes this stock market disaster to macroeconomic factors like the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hike to fight inflation and the energy crisis in Europe, many Tesla shareholders believe that his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion is the big problem. 

They claim that when Musk set his sights on the social media platform, he completely left Tesla behind. Worse, he has alienated many Tesla buyers by attacking progressives and Democrats on Twitter regularly.

Tesla Outperforms Its Rivals

Retail investors together own 41.9% of Tesla shares as of Dec. 5, according to WallStreetZen. Institutional investors hold the biggest block with 43.01% of the shares. The balance is held by the company’s executives, ie 15%.

While Musk once responded to some criticism a while back, he’s been quiet lately. This is no doubt due to the fact that he must observe the quiet period until the publication of the company’s earnings on January 25. Until that date, the management team musk remain silent so as not to influence the share price to the benefit of certain shareholders or to the detriment of others. 

But Musk has just found a subtle and striking way to respond to the criticism, which has turned violent in recent days. The entrepreneur has just retweeted a chart which shows that of all the major automakers present on the American market, only Tesla and General Motors  (GM) – Get Free Report have managed to increase their sales of light vehicles in 2022 compared to 2021. All the rest of the vehicle manufacturers have seen their sales decrease compared to 2021. 

Tesla saw its sales increase by 44% over one year while those of GM only increased by 3%.

Musk said nothing else.



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Business

SpaceX raising $750 million at $137 billion valuation, a16z investing

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A long exposure photo shows the path of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket as it launched the ispace mission on Dec. 11, 2022, with the rocket booster’s return and landing visible as well.

SpaceX

Elon Musk’s re-usable rocket maker and satellite internet company, SpaceX, is raising $750 million in a new round of funding that values the company at $137 billion, according to correspondence obtained by CNBC.

Last month, Bloomberg first reported that SpaceX was allowing insiders to sell at $77 per share, which would have put the company’s valuation near $140 billion. The company raised more than $2 billion in 2022, including a $250 million round in July, and was valued at $127 billion during an equity round in May, CNBC previously reported.

According to an e-mail sent to prospective SpaceX investors, Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z) will likely lead the new funding round. Early SpaceX investors included Founders Fund, Sequoia, Gigafund and many others.

A16z also participated in Elon Musk’s leveraged buyout of Twitter, a $44 billion deal that closed in late October 2022.

SpaceX and a16z did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last year, SpaceX achieved several new milestones but faced delays to its Starship program, which is part of NASA’s effort to bring astronauts back to the moon.

On the upside, the company’s satellite internet service, Starlink, exceeded 1 million subscribers and provided a lifeline to users in Ukraine who suffered infrastructure disruptions after Russia’s invasion. SpaceX also managed to surpass 60 reusable rocket launches in a single year via its Falcon program.

The company is currently continuing development of its Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicles at the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. It’s not clear when the company will move to the next step of the program, which entails an orbital launch test of these larger vehicles.

As Musk has repeatedly sounded off about geopolitical issues on Twitter, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently asked SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell whether his “distraction” as the new owner and CEO of Twitter might affect SpaceX’s work with the space agency, NBC News reported. Nelson said that Shotwell reassured him it would not.

NASA is now considering whether SpaceX can help rescue residents on the International Space Station, including an astronaut and two cosmonauts with Russia’s Roscomos, according to CNET. Russia’s Soyuz capsule sprung a coolant leak in December, and an investigation is underway to determine if the spacecraft can safely return the crew home or if emergency measures will need to be taken instead.

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Business

Bahamas Regulator Says It Seized $3.5 Billion in FTX Crypto Assets

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Bahamas securities regulators said they seized digital assets valued at $3.5 billion from FTX’s local operation in mid-November as the cryptocurrency exchange spiraled toward collapse, a figure that FTX’s U.S. managers cast doubt on Friday.

Christina Rolle, executive director of the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, said in an affidavit made public Thursday that the commission sought control of the crypto assets held by FTX Digital Markets Ltd. last month after FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried told local authorities under oath about a hacking attempt. Her affidavit, filed with the Supreme Court of the Bahamas, also confirmed that the Securities Commission relied on Mr. Bankman-Fried and another FTX co-founder, Gary Wang, to make the transfers happen.

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Business

Sam Bankman-Fried Likely to Plead Not Guilty to Fraud Charges

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FTX founder

Sam Bankman-Fried

is likely to plead not guilty to fraud and other charges at his arraignment next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York earlier this month charged Mr. Bankman-Fried with engaging in criminal conduct that contributed to the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, alleging that he oversaw one of the biggest financial frauds in American history. Mr. Bankman-Fried is likely to appear in person in New York to enter his plea on Jan. 3, one of the people said.

Before his arrest, Mr. Bankman-Fried blamed the loss of customer funds on sloppy record-keeping and a bank-account issue that allowed Alameda Research, an affiliated trading firm, to cover large losses with money destined for FTX. His not guilty plea was widely expected.

The collapse of FTX has set off the largest crypto-related bankruptcy ever, and court filings are already shedding light on what went wrong and how complicated things could get. Here are three things to know about the company’s bankruptcy process. Photo: Lam Yik/Bloomberg News

Mr. Bankman-Fried stands at odds with his associates—

Caroline Ellison,

the former chief executive of Alameda Research, and

Gary Wang,

FTX’s former chief technology officer—who both pleaded guilty to criminal offenses similar to those Mr. Bankman-Fried was charged with. Both are cooperating with federal investigators.

The collapse of FTX and its sister trading firm Alameda have rattled the nascent world of crypto. Prosecutors allege that Mr. Bankman-Fried took billions of dollars of FTX.com customer money to pay the expenses and debts of his trading firm Alameda Research. Both companies filed for bankruptcy last month. Individual traders who entrusted FTX with their crypto are likely facing lengthy bankruptcy proceedings before they have a chance at seeing any of their funds back.

Mr. Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond last week and has been ordered to stay in his parent’s Palo Alto, Calif., home after his appearance in a New York federal court following his extradition from the Bahamas.

Prosecutors say that from 2019 through November, Mr. Bankman-Fried conspired with unnamed individuals to defraud customers and lenders. He provided false and misleading information to lenders on the financial condition of Alameda, according to the indictment by the U.S. attorney’s office.

Mr. Bankman-Fried is also accused of defrauding the Federal Election Commission starting in 2020 by conspiring with others to make illegal contributions to candidates and political committees in the names of other people.

He and his associates contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in recent years, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. He personally made $40 million in donations ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Mr. Bankman-Fried also faces allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The SEC alleged in a civil lawsuit that Mr. Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds from the start of FTX to support Alameda and to make venture investments, real-estate purchases and political donations. The CFTC filed a lawsuit linking his allegedly fraudulent conduct at Alameda and FTX to markets that the CFTC regulates.

On Friday afternoon, Mr. Bankman-Fried returned to Twitter for the first time since Dec. 12 to defend himself against rumors that he has been moving funds out of several crypto wallet addresses associated with Alameda.

Cryptocurrency prices have cratered this year amid rising central bank rates and the collapses of a once-prominent hedge fund and crypto lenders, with bitcoin and ether plunging 64% and 67%, respectively, according to CoinDesk data. The total market cap of all digital tokens fell to $795 billion, compared with $2.2 trillion at the start of year, per CoinMarketCap data.

Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8



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Business

Crypto Price Check: Ringing Out ’22, Looking to the New Year

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When the ball comes down in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, just about everybody in the crypto sector will be very happy to close the books on 2022.

This was the year of the crypto meltdown, marked by such events as the collapse of sister cryptocurrencies Luna and UST, or TerraUSD, which sparked a credit crunch that proved disastrous for many firms, including hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, or 3AC.

The fund was unable to honor its payments to crypto lenders Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, so 3AC was forced into liquidation, while Celsius and Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

And then there was the whole FTX debacle, which saw founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested and his crypto empire in ruins.

David Lesperance, managing partner of immigration and tax adviser with Lesperance & Associates, said that “2021 was a boom year for crypto, 2022 was a bummer year, and 2023 will be the year that the market and regulators clear out the riff raff.”

He said the market is demanding proof of reserves, account separation, and software that cannot easily be hacked resulting in stolen monies from crypto exchanges, stablecoins and DeFi, or decentralized finance.

“The tide is going out and the crypto world is about to find out who was swimming naked and who is wearing a bathing suit,” Lesperance said. “Those found to be swimming naked will find themselves under close examination by regulators and criminal law enforcement to see if there were any chargeable transgressions.”

“Those with a bathing suit will find themselves more powerful than ever as their competitors disappear,” he said. 

Bitcoin  (~BTCUSD)  was off slightly to $16,628.62 on Dec. 29, according to data firm CoinGecko. Ether, the native currency of the ethereum blockchain, was flat at $1,202.14, while dogecoin was up modestly to $0.071208. 

‘A Year Filled With Tough Lessons’

Frank Corva, senior analyst for digital assets at Finder, said that “2022 was a year filled with tough lessons for those in the crypto space.”

“The biggest and most sobering lesson that many investors in the space learned is the oft-cited crypto adage: not your keys, not your coins,” he said. 

“Due to the failures of numerous borrowing and lending centralized finance platforms like BlockFi, Celsius and Voyager as well as the implosion of FTX,” Corva said, “crypto investors learned the hard way that when you don’t hold the private keys to your digital assets in your own hands, you no longer technically own said assets.”

Another big lesson that many in the space learned, he said, is that crypto and leverage don’t mix. 

“Crypto assets are extremely volatile, and, when you trade them with leverage, you’re really playing with fire,” Corva said. “Not only did major crypto hedge funds like Three Arrows Capital go under due to its trading with excessive leverage, but many retail investors lost money, too, as more crypto derivative products came to market this year.”

Moving into 2023, Corva said he believes that the crypto industry has to focus on product-market fit.

“Given that regulators are champing at the bit to rein in what has proven to be an industry that cannot govern itself,” he said. “Developers in the space are going to need to ship products that have real use cases so as to better illustrate the value of this technology.”

“Just having a lot of developer activity on a blockchain isn’t a good enough reason for people to invest in crypto coins and tokens in the long term,” Corva said. “In 2023, I hope that developers consider the real world applications for what they develop. And I hope that UX and UI for decentralized apps (dApps) continue to improve.”

Institutional Investors at a Crossroads

Winston Ma, a New York University Law School adjunct professor, said that in the post-FTX era, institutional investors–especially the largest sovereign wealth funds and pension funds–are at the crossroad regarding Web3 and crypto Investments in 2023.

 “As a result of FTX bankruptcy, Singapore government-backed Temasek announced that it had respectively fully written down their $275 million investment in the crypto exchange,” he said.

In its announcement, Ma noted, Temasek said that there have been “misperceptions” that the FTX exposure was “an investment into cryptocurrencies.” 

Instead, Temasek continues to recognize the potential of blockchain applications and decentralized technologies “to transform sectors and create a more connected world” and Ma said this kind of bifurcated approach probably will be seen across the institutional investor space.

“They will shift their focus toward infrastructural aspects of blockchain, the so-called picks and shovels of the industry,” said Ma, author of Blockchain and Web3: Building the Cryptocurrency, Privacy, and Security Foundations of the Metaverse. “Instead of pure financial applications, so-called ‘hard technology’ innovations will be in favor.” 

“They tend to be technical in nature, requiring a high level of expertise; also, they take longer to build out and realize, which matches well with the patient, long-term capital of sovereign wealth funds and pension funds,” he added. 

“So in 2023, we may see institutional investors like SWFs and pensions focus more on Web3 tech investing and less on token-related projects, as VC funds typically do historically.”



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Business

U.S. stock futures rise ahead of last trading week of 2022

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U.S. stock futures rose Monday night, ahead of the final trading week of 2022.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures
YM00,
+0.44%
gained more than 150 points, or 0.5%, as of 11 p.m. Eastern. S&P 500 futures
ES00,
+0.59%
and Nasdaq-100 futures
NQ00,
+0.71%
were also logging solid gains, indicating positive market moves when regular trading resumes Tuesday from the three-day Christmas holiday.

Oil prices rose
CL.1,
+0.85%,
as the U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
-0.30%
slipped.

Last week, the Dow gained nearly 1%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell for a third straight week.

See more: What to expect for the stock market in 2023 after the biggest decline since the financial crisis

On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 
DJIA,
+0.53%
rose 176.44 points, or 0.5%, to close at 33,203.93. The S&P 500 
SPX,
+0.59%
 gained 22.43 points, or 0.6%, finishing at 3,844.82, for a weekly decline of 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite 
COMP,
+0.21%
 closed at 10,497.86, up 6.85 points, or 0.4%. For the week, the Nasdaq fell 1.9%.

Friday marked the start of the so-called Santa Claus rally period — the final five trading days of the calendar year and the first two trading days of the new year. That stretch has, on average, produced gains for stocks, but failure to do so is often read as a negative indicator.

Read more: How a Santa Claus rally, or lack thereof, sets the stage for the stock market in first quarter

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Business

Caroline Ellison Apologizes for Misconduct in FTX Collapse

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Caroline Ellison,

a close associate of FTX founder

Sam Bankman-Fried,

apologized in court this week as she pleaded guilty to fraud and other offenses, telling a judge that she and others conspired to steal billions of dollars from customers of the doomed crypto exchange while misleading investors and lenders.

“I am truly sorry for what I did,” Ms. Ellison, the former chief executive of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crypto-trading firm, Alameda Research, said in a New York federal court, according to a transcript of the hearing made available Friday. “I knew that it was wrong.”

Ms. Ellison, 28 years old, and former FTX chief technology officer

Gary Wang,

29, pleaded guilty Monday during separate hearings in sealed courtrooms. Both agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation in exchange for the prospect of lighter sentences.

Ms. Ellison, a former romantic partner of Mr. Bankman-Fried, pleaded guilty to seven criminal counts, including fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. During her hearing, she admitted to conspiring to use billions of dollars from FTX customer accounts to repay loans Alameda had taken out to make risky investments.

FTX executives had enacted special settings that granted Alameda access to an unlimited line of credit without having to post collateral, pay interest on negative balances or be subject to margin calls, she said.

“I also understood that many FTX customers invested in crypto derivatives and that most FTX customers did not expect that FTX would lend out their digital asset holdings and fiat currency deposits to Alameda in this fashion,” she said.

Ms. Ellison also said she and Mr. Bankman-Fried worked with others to conceal the arrangement from lenders, including by hiding on quarterly balance sheets the extent of Alameda’s borrowing and the billions of dollars in loans that the firm had made to FTX executives and associates. Mr. Bankman-Fried was among the executives who received loans from Alameda, she said.

Under questioning from the judge, Ms. Ellison said she knew what she was doing was illegal.

She said that since FTX’s implosion, she has worked hard to assist in the recovery of customers’ assets and aid the government’s investigation. 

At the hearing, U.S. District Judge

Ronnie Abrams

granted the request of federal prosecutors to temporarily seal all documents connected to Ms. Ellison’s plea agreement. At the time, Mr. Bankman-Fried was in a jail in the Bahamas after the Justice Department requested local police arrest him, and he had not yet formally consented to his transfer to U.S. custody. 

“We’re still expecting extradition soon, but given that he has not yet entered his consent, we think it could potentially thwart our law enforcement objectives to extradite him if Ms. Ellison’s cooperation were disclosed at this time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney

Danielle Sassoon

told Judge Abrams. 

A lawyer for Ms. Ellison declined to comment. Ms. Ellison was ordered released on $250,000 bond at her plea hearing. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment. 

John J. Ray III, the new chief executive of FTX, testified in front of a House committee Tuesday on the collapse of the crypto exchange. His testimony came less than a day after the company founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in the Bahamas. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News

Mr. Wang pleaded guilty in front of the same judge. He told Judge Abrams he knew what he was doing was illegal and wrong. “As part of my employment at FTX, I was directed to and agreed to make certain changes to the platform’s code,” he said, adding that he executed the changes knowing they would give Alameda Research special privileges on the FTX platform.

A lawyer for Mr. Wang declined to comment. He has previously said that Mr. Wang takes his responsibilities as a cooperating witness seriously.

The Justice Department charged Mr. Bankman-Fried earlier this month with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy connected to the implosion of his company. He was released from custody on a $250 million bond on Thursday after making his first court appearance in New York following his extradition from the Bahamas. A federal magistrate judge set strict restrictions on Mr. Bankman-Fried, including ordering him to stay in his parents’ Palo Alto, Calif., home and be under electronic monitoring. 

Mr. Bankman-Fried has said he made mistakes that contributed to FTX’s demise, but he has denied engaging in fraud.

Write to Corinne Ramey at corinne.ramey@wsj.com and James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Scott Minerd, Guggenheim Partners’ Investment Chief, Dies at Age 63

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Scott Minerd,

an outspoken and influential fund manager who was chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, died Wednesday of a heart attack.

Mr. Minerd, 63 years old and a committed weightlifter known to bench press more than 400 pounds, died during his daily workout, the firm said.

Mr. Minerd joined Guggenheim shortly after the firm was founded in 1998.

Guggenheim Chief Executive

Mark Walter

credited him with designing the organization, systems and procedures that helped Guggenheim rise from a startup to a manager of more than $218 billion in total assets and 900 employees.

Mr. Minerd served as the public face of Guggenheim. In that role, he was among Wall Street’s more prominent personalities, making frequent appearances on television and maintaining an active presence on social media to discuss markets and investments, often in blunt terms.

“That sound you hear is the Fed breaking something,” he wrote in October in a message to clients, warning that the central bank’s campaign to raise interest rates was causing dislocations in fixed-income and foreign-exchange markets.

Mr. Minerd was a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets and an adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Mr. Minerd is survived by his husband Eloy Mendez.

“As an asset manager, I’ve come to view conventional wisdom as the surest path to investment underperformance,” Mr. Minerd wrote in a biographical summary.

Mr. Minerd grew up in western Pennsylvania and studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He also took courses at the University of Chicago and described himself as a monetarist.

He worked as a dealer in currencies, bonds and structured securities at Merrill Lynch,

Morgan Stanley

and CS First Boston in the 1980s and 1990s.

At age 37, feeling burned out, he left Wall Street and moved to Los Angeles. “I walked away from extremely large offers on Wall Street,” he told Bloomberg in 2017. “I realized this wasn’t a dress rehearsal for life, this was it.” After joining what became Guggenheim Partners, he worked in a Santa Monica, Calif., office overlooking the ocean.

Mr. Minerd was a conservative willing to embrace some ideas from the left and seek middle ground.

In a 2020 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he took aim at elite universities, including the University of Pennsylvania. “These schools have huge endowments, and why are they not focusing their endowment on advancing a cause of essentially free education or at least education that provides complete support for people below certain income levels?” he asked. Mr. Minerd said he wouldn’t make donations going to “bricks and mortar and making the place look better when people who would be qualified to come there can’t afford to do it. And, of course, if we had more equal access to education, it would help address some of the issues around race and poverty.”

Referring to his bulky bodybuilder’s physique, he once told a Wall Street Journal reporter that when people asked about “key man” risk at Guggenheim and wondered what would happen if Mr. Minerd was hit by a truck, his staff members would respond, “Do you mean what would happen to the truck?”

One of his favorite charities was Union Rescue Mission, which provides food, shelter, training and other services to homeless people in Los Angeles County.

Andy Bales,

chief executive of Union Rescue Mission, recalled meeting Mr. Minerd around 2008, when the mission was in poor financial shape and in danger of having to sell one of its sites. “He told me that God was tapping him on the shoulder, telling him to do more for others,” the Rev. Bales said. Mr. Minerd ended up donating more than $5 million to the mission to allow it to expand services.

Mr. Minerd was often seen with a rescue dog he called Grace, who accompanied him to the office and on trips.

His work schedule was punishing. “He was up early for East Coast customers and went late for his West Coast customers,” the Rev. Bales said.

Write to Charley Grant at charles.grant@wsj.com and James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com

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