— Binance.US also hired a former House Financial Services aide and a former House chief of staff from Ice Miller Strategies to lobby on its behalf, according to disclosures filed last week. Though the company has not previously hired lobbyists in Washington, last August it joined the Blockchain Association, an industry lobbying group that was a vocal player in negotiations over cryptocurrency tax provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure bill and that has spent nearly $300,000 on lobbying in the first half of 2021.
— “What it has nurtured, though, are Skarlatos’ political ambitions, providing $65,000, records show, to his 2022 bid for a rematch with longtime Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio,” who is one of a number of members being targeted by the GOP for the midterms. Skarlatos, who became famous after he helped disrupt an attack on a train bound for Paris by an armed Islamic State sympathizer, started his nonprofit a month after losing to DeFazio. He named it “15:17 Trust — a reference to the train attack. It was registered in Virginia, with his campaign treasurer also serving as the group’s treasurer, records show.”

Each addition is known as a block. Blocks consist of all transactions executed since the last new copy of the blockchain was created.
Spot trading means you’re not technically “buying” the cryptocurrency, but instead trading your USD for it through either a market or a limit order. A market order means you agree to trade for the currency at the current market price. A limit order lets you put in a designated price at which you want the trade to occur, and when the currency reaches that price, the trade happens automatically. These orders then incur “maker” (for limit orders) or “taker” (for market orders) fees — though on Binance.US, there’s just a standard 0.1% fee.