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Lynch family ‘devastated’ and ‘in shock’ after bodies of Mike Lynch and daughter Hannah recovered from yacht

T he family of Mike and Hannah Lynch are “devastated” and “in shock” after they died when the a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.

On Friday, the body of Hannah, 18, was the last to be recovered from the wreckage of the Bayesian superyacht.

Unconfirmed reports in the Italian media suggest prosecutors are set to announce a manslaughter investigation into the incident.

Cambridge entrepreneur Dr Lynch and his daughter lost their lives along with Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo when the yacht sank at around 5am local time on Monday.

In a statement, Mike and Hannah’s family said: “The Lynch family is devastated, in shock and is being comforted and supported by family and friends.

“Their thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragedy. They would like to sincerely thank the Italian coastguard, emergency services and all those who helped in the rescue.

“Their one request now is that their privacy be respected at this time of unspeakable grief.”

Dr Lynch was the founder of Autonomy, the Cambridge software company Autonomy and was involved in the formation of number of other successful Cambridge companies, including cybersecurity unicorn Darktrace, AI company Luminance and investment company Invoke Capital.

In June, he was acquitted of all fraud charges after a 13-year legal saga centred around the $11bn (£8.4billion) sale of Autonomy to Silicon Valley company Hewlett Packard (HP). The boat trip was a celebration of Dr Lynch’s acquittal in the case, with those who had represented him or helped him invited along.

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Elon musk moves to foreclose on gene wilder’s former la home.

The nephew of the late Gene Wilder, filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman, has found himself in a financial bind over a piece of Hollywood history — his famed uncle’s former home in Los Angeles.

Back in 2020, tech titan Elon Musk was the owner of the residence, located in affluent Bel Air. Musk agreed to sell the home to Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter, for $7 million and even toss in a loan to help seal the deal.

But now, just four years later, it seems to be slipping through their fingers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“He could have sold it for so much more,” Walker-Pearlman told the Journal in 2022, clearly still grateful for Musk’s generosity. “His sensitivity to me can’t be overstated.”

Fast forward to this summer, and the story has taken a darker turn. An entity connected to Musk has slapped a notice of default on the property — a legal move that marks the beginning of a foreclosure.

According to the paperwork, the couple is nearly $7 million behind on their payments; in 90 days, the house could go up for grabs.

Despite the looming threat, Walker-Pearlman is surprisingly chill about the whole situation.

“There’s no tragedy here,” he told the outlet. “Elon gave us a magical opportunity. I have no complaints.” He emphasized that Musk isn’t out to get them, saying the billionaire isn’t being “adversarial or mean.”

The property, perched above a country club and featuring a vintage Hollywood vibe complete with a kidney-shaped pool, is now on the market for nearly $13 million.

But whether it sells in time to prevent foreclosure remains to be seen. Walker-Pearlman and Hunter are trying to work things out with Musk, who has yet to comment on the matter.

Drew Meyers of Westside Estate Agency holds the current sale listing.

The filmmaker partially blames the writers’ and actors’ strikes for his financial woes, which hit the entertainment industry hard last year. He says Hunter, who holds the title to the house, felt uneasy about continuing to owe Musk.

“She did not want to continue morally owing Elon anymore,” Walker-Pearlman told the outlet. “We already owe him such a spiritual debt.”

The house is more than just bricks and mortar for Walker-Pearlman. It’s a place filled with memories of a young boy growing up in the shadows of Hollywood greats like Mel Brooks and Sidney Poitier. It’s where Wilder read scripts, played piano and hosted Sunday hangouts with his famous friends — which Walker-Pearlman got to experience.

“That was my home schooling,” Walker-Pearlman once said.

Wilder bought the house in 1976 for just $300,000 after the success of “Young Frankenstein” and lived there until 2007, when he sold it for $2.72 million.

Made up of four bedrooms and four bathrooms, the home, built in 1951, occupies nearly 3,000 square feet.

After Wilder’s death in 2016, the house passed to Musk, who scooped it up for $6.75 million in 2013, when it was conveniently located across the street from his main pad.

When Musk decided to offload the house in 2020, Walker-Pearlman and Hunter jumped at the chance to keep it in the family, even though they couldn’t swing the full $9.5 million asking price.

Musk, known for his spontaneous decisions, agreed to a lower price and offered a loan to help them out.

But now, as the couple faces the possibility of losing the house, Walker-Pearlman is ready to let go.

“This is likely the closing of a very unicorn and beautiful chapter of our lives,” he said, adding, “I’m not disgruntled at all.”

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Mike lynch and others feared dead after sicily superyacht sinking.

British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and five others are feared dead with their bodies trapped on the superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily .

The yacht, called Bayesian, sank in the early hours of Monday morning, carrying 12 passengers and 10 crew. The $14m (£10.7m) boat was hit by a storm near Palermo. While one body has been recovered, six people remain missing. The yacht is now on the seabed at a depth of 50m.

Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah; Morgan Stanley International and Hiscox chairman Jonathan Bloomer; his wife Judy Bloomer; Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo; and his wife Neda Morvillo are also missing.

Fifteen of the 22 passengers and crew onboard – including Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares – were rescued after escaping onto a lifeboat. One body, reportedly belonging to the ship’s chef, was recovered at the scene.

On Thursday, Vincenzo Zagarola of the Italian coastguard said that the working theory of officials on Sicily is that the remaining six are dead with their bodies trapped on the boat is because it is believed the vessel sank quickly and search and rescue efforts by sea and air have so far delivered no results.

Asked about the likelihood of them being alive, he replied: “Never say never, but reasonably the answer should be not.”

A Morgan Stanley spokesperson said the bank was “shocked and saddened” by news that non-executive chairman Bloomer was among those missing, saying: “We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragedy. Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular the Bloomer family, as we all wait for further news from this terrible situation.”

Meanwhile, Hiscox group chief executive Aki Hussain said: “We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event. Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing, and with their family as they await further news from this terrible situation.”

Lynch is a looming figure in British business as the former CEO of Autonomy Corporation, which he founded and grew in the mid-90s. Autonomy was purchased by Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ ) in 2011 — an $11bn deal which led to Lynch being accused of 15 counts of fraud on US turf.

HP eventually wrote down Autonomy's value by $8.8bn after the company was accused of inflating sales and misleading investors to clinch the deal.

Read more: Who is Mike Lynch? 'UK's Bill Gates' among those missing from Sicily yacht

In June this year, he was cleared of all counts in San Francisco, after a 13-year legal tussle. Morvillo had worked on Lynch's defence. He has been a partner at magic circle law firm Clifford Chance in New York since 2011.

It was a notable victory, not only because the size of the original deal, but also because of the fact that in the US in fiscal year 2022, only 0.4% of federal criminal cases led to trial and acquittal, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 12% of all wire fraud prosecutions resulted in acquittal.

Lynch's co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

Ahead of the trial, Lynch was extradited to the US and put under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance.

Lynch, who was awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006, was later an investor of the cybersecurity unicorn Darktrace ( DARK.L ). He also sat on the boards of the BBC and the British Library, founded Invoke Capital VC.

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Crypto’s Shiny New Political Machine

Amongst the sea of American flags and ubiquitous blue signs at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week prowled Jonathan Padilla, the “crypto guy.”

Wearing a baseball cap and conspicuous pineapple-print shirt, Padilla tramped the halls of the convention, talking crypto policy with anyone who would listen. In a selfie posted on Facebook, he posed with his arm around Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. “Senator Coons now knows about crypto,” reads the caption.

Padilla is delighted with his new “crypto guy” moniker, assigned by fellow DNC delegates, which he sees as implicit recognition that cryptocurrency has arrived on the political agenda. “Four years ago, crypto was a nonissue and nobody talked about it,” says Padilla. “But now, you have President Trump talking about it at major conferences . And it’s being discussed by some of the highest-ranking Democrats.”

Padilla is the founder of crypto marketing company Snickerdoodle Labs and was previously resident blockchain whisperer at PayPal. He is also one of the organizers of Crypto4Harris, a coalition of Democrat-supporting members of the crypto industry, whose aim is to encourage Kamala Harris to support crypto-specific legislation and demonstrate that the sector “is not monolithically Republican,” says Padilla.

On August 14, Crypto4Harris hosted a virtual town hall attended by prominent Democrats, among them Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who said he “believed in the future of crypto.” The group has also “made headway,” Padilla claims, with “finance and policy folks” inside the Harris camp.

The group’s access to the Harris team reflects a sea change in the attitude toward crypto among US politicians, who seem to have accepted that there exists a bloc of voters who will cast their ballot based exclusively on which candidate will send their investments to the moon. (You know, forget immigration, health care, and the rest.) Not to mention the hefty donations crypto businesses are throwing around.

Flush after an upswing in crypto prices in 2024, crypto firms have invested an “unprecedented” amount in influencing the outcome of the US election this year, an analysis by consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen suggests. Despite their comparatively diminutive size from a revenue perspective—and the continued paucity of use cases outside of financial speculation—crypto businesses account for 48 percent of all corporate contributions this election cycle.

The crypto industry put some money behind the 2020 race. But there is fresh urgency and forcefulness in its attempted intervention in the 2024 campaign. “The industry believes this election is existential,” says Veronica McGregor, chief legal officer at crypto wallet company Exodus, speaking in a personal capacity as an industry veteran. “No matter who gets into office, changes need to happen for our industry to thrive like it should.”

The majority of political donations from the crypto industry are being fed through a trio of affiliated super political action committees (PACs): Fairshake, Protect Progress, and Defend American Jobs. These organizations cannot donate directly to political candidates, but they can spend freely to promote those that make the right sort of cooing sounds about crypto.

Under the Biden administration, crypto companies have been roughed up and dragged into court by US financial regulators, which they view as deeply unfair . But through the super PACs, crypto firms are hoping to bring into power politicians who will support bespoke crypto legislation that ends the debate over how crypto should be classified and which regulator’s rules should apply.

The largest of these super PACs, Fairshake, has raised more than $200 million—a greater sum than any other super PAC, crypto-specific or otherwise. Its major donors include crypto businesses Coinbase and Ripple, pro-crypto venture capital firm a16z , and an investment firm started by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of crypto exchange Gemini.

The largest of the Fairshake donors, Coinbase, which has contributed $45 million to the pot, is the subject of a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission. Lodged jointly by Public Citizen and software developer Molly White, creator of Follow the Crypto , a project that traces crypto industry donations, the complaint alleges that Coinbase violated campaign finance laws by contributing to Fairshake while negotiating a deal to become a federal contractor.

Coinbase declined an interview request, pointing instead to public comments made by Paul Grewal, its chief legal officer, disputing the characterization of the company as a federal contractor on the grounds that the service it provides is not technically funded by tax revenue. “To us, it looks like Coinbase is trying to find a loophole that doesn’t really exist,” says White.

“The crypto industry has been historically very willing to ignore laws they don't like, and it would be nice to see some consequences for that,” she says “I don't like watching any big companies or very wealthy executives throwing money around in ways that most voters are not able to do. I'm just hoping to see that the spending is at least within the law.”

The FEC will now decide whether Coinbase should be penalized. But in the meantime, the crypto super PACs are deploying their war chests to good effect against crypto nonbelievers. In California, Fairshake spent $10 million on ads attacking Katie Porter , a California Democrat running for the Senate, and who ended up losing her primary. The same fate befell Democratic congress members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush—who Fairshake spent a combined $3.5 million smearing —in their respective primaries. None of the hostile ads made any mention of crypto.

Fairshake declined to speak publicly about its strategy, but a common thread connects the candidates it opposes: an allegiance with outspoken crypto critics—like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the industry’s favorite cartoon villains —or a failure to vote in favor of proposed legislation popular in crypto circles.

In 2022, Porter launched an investigation alongside Warren into the impact of crypto mining on the Texas energy grid . In May, Porter, Bowman, and Bush all voted against a crypto bill that would clarify the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a US financial regulator that has launched a volley of lawsuits against crypto businesses under the Biden administration, including Coinbase . (The bill nonetheless passed by a landslide and awaits Senate approval.)

So far, industry figureheads have largely lined up behind the Trump campaign: The Winklevii each donated $1 million to Trump, as did Jesse Powell , cofounder of the Kraken exchange. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of a16z, have also publicly endorsed Trump .

Trump, for his part, despite having previously dismissed bitcoin as a “ scam ,” has recently taken to pitching himself as the “crypto president.” In July, speaking to thousands of bitcoiners at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump promised to turn the US into the “crypto capital of the planet” and establish a national “ bitcoin stockpile ” if reelected. The most raucous cheers of the night were prompted by Trump’s promise to fire Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC.

“There is a lot of anger and frustration with the fact that we in the industry often don’t know what to do. We think we are complying, then the SEC or another agency sues,” says McGregor. “We are serving a bunch of different masters. That’s not how regulation is supposed to be done.”

Organizations like Crypto4Harris are pulling for a “reset” with the Harris campaign, to beat back the narrative that Trump is the only rational choice for cryptoheads. “People are angry. People are concerned,” says Padilla. “But I think if you have the reset we are talking about with the Harris campaign, you’re in a really good spot to have temperatures simmer down.”

Unlike her Republican counterpart, Harris has kept her cards close to her chest. The Democratic platform for 2024 did not include any mention of crypto. But on Wednesday, an adviser to Harris provided the first indication that the vice president might be considering a supplication. “She’s going to support policies that ensure that emerging technologies and that sort of industry can continue to grow,” the adviser told Bloomberg .

Both sides of the crypto industry have come to the conclusion that the 2024 election is “existential” by way of different reasoning. The Trump-supporting faction believes a Harris presidency would represent a continuation of the bad old times under Biden and that talk of a “reset” is misdirection. “We will not fall for any bluffs,” wrote Cameron Winklevoss on X, tagging Harris.

Meanwhile, the crypto-Democrats see Trump’s giddy courtship of the industry as blatant electioneering. “You have to ask yourself: Is Donald Trump somebody you actually trust?” says Padilla. “The only person running for president that has ever said cryptocurrency is a scam is Donald Trump.”

Time Travel

The crypto world has largely given over to its more profit-conscious denizens. But it wasn’t very long ago that true believers were equally invested in the power of the blockchain to replace the internet as we know it with a decentralized paradise. In a 2022 cover story for WIRED , Gilad Edelman spent an illuminating few days at the ETHDenver conference, where he found a glimpse at a crypto future that has yet to materialize.

If Bitcoin attracts anarcho-capitalists who want to dethrone the central bankers, the culture around Ethereum and Web3 has a more progressive bent. After I walked into the Denver Sports Castle, a massive former sporting goods store turned events space that served as ETHDenver’s main venue, the first panel I caught was about using blockchains to build “public goods.” Another was titled “Navigating the Web3 Workforce as a BIPOC, Queer, Marginalized Individual.” (The overall crowd skewed heavily white and male.) Aesthetically, ETHDenver embraced a spirit of collaborative, LARPish make-believe; there was quite a bit of talk about the Bufficorn, the cartoon buffalo-unicorn hybrid that was the event’s NFT mascot. (It fuses the magic of the unicorn with the strength of the buffalo.) People communicated with all manner of cheerful memes: gm, for “good morning,” was the universal greeting, regardless of the time of day; wagmi meant “we’re all gonna make it.”

During the opening ceremony, the conference organizers emphasized Web3’s idealism. “It’s not about money,” said John Paller, founder of ETHDenver. “We don’t care about that.” The theme of the conference, he explained, was “BUIDLing.” The term, which everyone pronounced “biddling,” is a riff on the crypto meme “HODLing”—holding one’s assets no matter how grim the market looks, as an expression of faith in its long-term value. (In crypto, as in all internet culture, typos are a rich source of memes.) “BUIDL is the rally cry of the Bufficorn,” Paller said.

What exactly were they BUIDLing? It’s easy to find brilliant, idealistic, experienced technology experts who think Web3 is pure nonsense. But it’s almost as easy to find ones who think it’s the real deal—humanity’s best chance of redeeming the entire promise of the internet.

You can submit questions to [email protected] . Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.

End Times Chronicle

The waterspouts that may have sunk the Bayesian superyacht are only going to become more common with climate change.

Last but Not Least

Copper’s a hot commodity these days— maybe too hot .

If China ever does invade Taiwan, the US is planning to contribute a “hellscape” of unmanned drones to the country’s defense.

Bought an EV? Don’t get your hopes up for its resale value.

The hacked personal data of millions of people has leaked online. Again. And there’s not much you can do about it. Again.

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