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The FTX/Alameda saga continues, with news late Wednesday that two key Sam Bankman-Fried associates were charged and have been charged with federal criminal offences in the U.S.: Both former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang plead guilty to multiple charges, and accepted plea agreements that offer reduced sentencing in exchange for assistance in ongoing investigations into wrongdoing at FTX/Alameda that prove “substantial.”

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried was also extradited to the U.S. from the Bahamas on Wednesday, facing suits by the SEC and CFTC over fraud, as well as federal criminal charges. When Southern District of New York attorney Damian Williams announced the charges at a press event last week, he noted that his office was “not done” in terms of levying additional charges, and now we know Ellison and Wang were at least some of the individuals he was referring to at the time.

Ellison and Wang are likely to be key witnesses for the feds in the SBF case, given that they are most likely to have direct and best knowledge that SBF knew about use of FTX customer funds to cover Alameda’s risky crypto trading bets.

This might not be the end of charges for individuals at FTX and Alameda, either – Williams re-iterated at the press conference announcing the charges against Ellison and Wang that if anyone else is considering coming forward to assist authorities in their prosecution of the case in exchange for possible leniency, now is the time.

Both Ellison and Wang also face civil penalties from the SEC and CFTC, announced alongside the criminal charges.

FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Alameda’s Caroline Ellison plead guilty to criminal charges by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch

Amid all the chaos, Twitter rolled out a useful feature that lets you search for listed company stocks and cryptocurrency prices.

To do this, users have to just type the dollar symbol followed by the relevant ticker symbol, e.g. “$GOOG” or “$ETH” (minus the quote marks), in the search bar and Twitter will display the current price. This does also work without using the $ symbol in some instances, but it’s less consistent and doesn’t always return the stock or crypto prices as requested.

However, when it works, users will see a static image displaying Today’s stock price and a chart without any information about the X or Y axis. So good luck figuring that out. Presumably, it’s a price chart for the most recent closing price for that stock, but it’s not all that clear.

But if someone does want to know more details about a stock or cryptocurrency, they can hit the “View on Robinhood” button.

As app researcher Jane Manchun Wong noted, the logo on the image indicates that Twitter is sourcing the data from the Tradingview website. The social media company has not made it clear if it is forming any kind of commercial partnership with either Robinhood or TradingView.

Twitter didn’t specify what symbols are included in the list for direct stock price search results. The company added that in the coming weeks it will refine the user experience and add better symbol compatibility. For example, at the time of writing, stock prices from companies such as Airbnb ($ABNB) and Zoom ($ZM) didn’t show up in the Twitter search.

Chaos at Twitter

It has been a busy couple of months at Twitter since Musk’s arrival on the scene. In the past week alone, the company rolled out and quickly rolled back a policy that banned links and handles to other social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Mastadon. The company also launched the Blue for Business plan that allows organizations to identify their affiliated brands and employees with an extra badge.

Elsewhere, Elon Musk ran a poll asking people if he should step down as CEO — and 57% of users voted “Yes.” A few days later, Musk said in a tweet: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

In a Twitter Space late Tuesday, Musk defended his drastic cost-cutting antics and revamp of the paid plan at the company. He said if not for these measures, Twitter would have run into negative cash flow within the next year.

Twitter now displays stock and cryptocurrency prices directly in search results by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Meet Vianova, a French startup that is building a data platform for shared mobility companies as well as local governments. The company acts as both a data repository and a data visualization dashboard.

It has raised a $6.4 million (€6 million) Series A funding round led by Baloise VC with XAnge as well as existing investors RATP Capital Innovation and Ponooc also participating.

Many cities have changed drastically with the rise of free-floating bikes, electric scooters, moped scooters and cars that you can unlock with your phone. Cities have also changed their rules over time and embracing micromobility in different ways.

The good news is that these mobility fleets all have some form of connectivity with a GPS chip and a cellular modem. In other words, companies and local governments can use data to make those services more efficient and safer for people using them and everyone else living in these cities.

Right now, Vianova tracks one million connected vehicles on its platform. Some companies use the platform to manage their fleet and make sure the vehicles are in the right spots at the right time.

Policymakers and data scientists can also leverage this platform to discover some trends. It can be used to improve infrastructure, create slow-speed zones or parking areas through geofencing and more.

All of this can be done through a SimCity-like dashboard with map overlays and real-time data. The idea is that you can use Vianova as real-time dashboard and as an analytics tool to generate historical reports and see how well you’re doing — whether you are a mobility company or a local government.

But an analytics tool without any data would be a bit useless. That’s why you can combine your own data with different mobility data sources. This can be particularly interesting for cities that want to access data from private companies to better understand what’s happening.

For instance, the city of Stockholm and Voi both use Vianova to improve shared mobility services in the city. Mobility companies decide who they want to share their data with.

Vianova uses APIs to fetch data from mobility operators so that you see live data on the platform. Data can be aggregated and anonymized.

Some of Vianova’s customers include the cities of Zurich, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Marseille, as well as mobility operators like Bolt and Voi. Some big infrastructure companies are also using the platform, such as RATP, Aéroports de Paris and KTH University.

Vianova builds the location data platform for shared mobility companies and cities by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch