Two links this week…
AI Logos Are All Buttholes
In what might be the most important visual design analysis of 2025, Velvet Shark has compiled a gallery of AI company logos that look like buttholes. From Claude’s spiral to Midjourney’s abstract void, it seems AI branding has converged on a rather unfortunate design pattern.
If It’s Crypto, It’s Not Money Laundering
Money laundering is legal now, as long as it’s crypto. JP Koning summaries the Trump administration’s latest legal changes: If it’s crypto, it’s not money laundering.
Earlier this week the Department of Justice’s deputy attorney general Todd Blanche sent out an internal staff memo saying that the digital asset industry (read: crypto) is “critical to the nation’s economic development.” (Editor’s note: it’s not.) As such, staff have been instructed to stop targeting crypto platforms such as exchanges, mixers like Tornado Cash and ChipMixer, and offline wallets for the “acts of their end users.”
What does “the acts of their end users” mean? Further clarity arrives deeper into Blanche’s memo. It helpfully draws attention to how cartels operating in the fentanyl trade often use digital assets. This is well known. Tether, for instance, is a popular payments platform in the fentanyl trade. (See here, here, and here). And yet, the Department goes on to explain that while it will continue to pursue cartels, terrorist organizations, and other illicit enterprises for their financial crimes, it “will not pursue actions against the platforms that these enterprises utilize to conduct their illegal activities.”
So banks are liable, Tether is not. What can go wrong?