Her death was announced Monday morning at ʻIolani Palace, Americas only royal residence where the Hawaiian monarchy dwelled but now serves mostly as a museum. No cause of death was given.

She held no formal title but was a living reminder of Hawaiis monarchy and a symbol of Hawaiian national identity that endured after the kingdom was overthrown by American businessmen in 1893.

She was always called princess among Hawaiians because Hawaiians have acknowledged that lineage, Kimo Alama Keaulana, assistant professor of Hawaiian language and studies at Honolulu Community College, said in a 2018 interview. Hawaiians hold dear to genealogy. And so genealogically speaking, she is of high royal blood.

He called her the last of our alii, using the Hawaiian word for royalty: She epitomizes what Hawaiian royalty is in all its dignity and intelligence and art.

James Campbell, her great-grandfather, was an Irish businessman who made his fortune as a sugar plantation owner and one of Hawaiis largest landowners.

He married Abigail Kuaihelani Maipinepine Bright. Their daughter, Abigail Campbell Kawānanakoa, married Prince David Kawānanakoa, who was named an heir to the throne.

After the prince died, his widow adopted young Abigail, which strengthened her claim to a princess title. She acknowledged in an interview with Honolulu Magazine in 2021 that had the monarchy survived, her cousin Edward Kawānanakoa would be in line to be the ruler, not her.

Of course, I would be the power behind the throne, theres no question about that, she joked.

As an only child of an only child, Kawānanakoa received more Campbell money than anyone else and amassed a trust valued at about $215 million.

She funded various causes over the years, including scholarships for Native Hawaiian students, opposing Honolulus rail transit project, supporting protests against a giant telescope, donating items owned by King Kalākaua and Queen Kapiʻolani for public display, including a 14-carat diamond from the kings pinky ring, and maintaining ʻIolani Palace.

Critics have said because there are other remaining descendants of the royal family who dont claim any titles, Kawānanakoa was held up as the last Hawaiian princess simply because of her wealth and honorific title.

Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte said many Hawaiians arent interested in whether she was a princess and that her impact on Indigenous culture was minimal.

We didnt quite understand what her role was and how she could help us, Ritte said.

Many Hawaiians couldnt relate to her, he said. We call it the high maka-maks, he said using a Hawaii Pidgin term that can mean upper-class.

Born in Honolulu, Kawānanakoa was educated at Punahou, a prestigious prep school. She also attended an American school in Shanghai and graduated from the all-female Notre Dame High School in Belmont, California, where she was a boarding student.

She was engaged briefly to a man, but most of her long-term relationships were with women.

She was always curious about what people would do for money, said Jim Wright, who was her personal attorney since 1998 until she fired him in 2017 during a bitter court battle over control of her trust.

He recalled a time when the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu asked for a $100,000 gift to mark the canonization of St. Marianne. She told him she would give the church the money only if she could get a photo of Pope Benedict XVI accepting her check, Wright said.

When the bishop agreed, Kawānanakoa was disappointed. She was really hoping they would tell her to buzz off, Wright said.

Meanwhile, she found the Dalai Lamas refusal to accept her monetary gifts in 2012 pleasing, Wright said: She was so pleased that somebody actually had some integrity.

One of her passions was breeding racehorses.

She was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2018, with the American Quarter Horse Association noting she was the industrys all-time leading female breeder at the reins of an operation that has produced the earners of more than $10 million.

One of her horses, A Classic Dash, won $1 million in 1993 in New Mexicos All-American Futurity.

Aside from drawing attention with her racehorses, Kawānanakoa gained notoriety when she sat on an ʻIolani Palace throne for a Life magazine photo shoot in 1998. She damaged some of its fragile threads.

The uproar led to her ouster as president of Friends of ʻIolani Palace, a position she held for more than 25 years.

The battle over control of her trust began when a judge approved Wright as a trustee after she suffered a stroke. She claimed she wasnt impaired, fired Wright and married Veronica Gail Worth, her partner of 20 years.

Court filings in the case alleged the wife physically abused Kawānanakoa. Attorneys for the couple disputed the claims.

In 2018, Kawānanakoa attempted to amend her trust ensure that her wife would receive $40 million and all her personal property, according to court records.

In 2020, a judge ruled that Kawānanakoa was unable to manage her property and business affairs because she was impaired.

For hearings in the case, her wife would drive them to a handicapped stall near the back entrance of a downtown Honolulu courthouse in a black Rolls Royce.

My wife? Oh, wifey, she said in a video interview her publicist released in 2019 to respond to allegations raised in the court case, including how her wife was treating her. If it wasnt for Gail, I wouldnt be as normal as you see me now, she said in the video showing her coiffed hair, made-up face and red manicure.

It was heartbreaking, she said, to be unable to fulfill her obligation to the Hawaiian people amid legal wrangling over her trust.

My heritage dictates that I must take care of the Hawaiian people, she said during one court hearing.

The foundation said it set aside $500,000 for the fund and plans to award more than 500 recipients with relief payments ranging from $750 to $4,500. A public application process for the fund opened on Monday, and recipients will receive their money in January if selected. Details about the fund were shared with The Associated Press ahead of the launch.

The BLM foundations Student Solidarity Fund is an expansion of a previous initiative it started last year as millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet amid economic uncertainty in the coronavirus pandemic. This time the foundation said it intends to use philanthropic dollars to draw attention to issues of economic injustice, especially while a proposed federal student debt forgiveness plan is held up by litigation from opponents.

The fact of the matter is that Black people who work to get an education are struggling right now, BLM foundation board chair Cicley Gay said. We recognize that we cant build a world of true liberation without the brilliance of Black people who are committed to furthering their education.

The relief is meant for bachelors degree recipients, as well as those who did not complete their degree but still carry student loan debt. Applicants must have attended a college or university in the U.S. The foundation is asking applicants to submit loan documents to prove their eligibility.

If selected, applicants with $75,000 or less in debt will receive $1,500. Applicants with debt between $75,001 and $150,000 will receive $3,000. And applicants with $150,001 or more in debt will receive $4,500.

The money is not restricted for use only on student loan payments, but the foundation said its relief funds are meant to lower recipients overall debt burden.

In a second phase of the fund, the BLM foundation said it will give microgrants of $750 to relief fund applicants who are currently attending historically Black colleges and universities, to help with housing, food, technology, books and transportation costs.

Foundation board secretary Shalomyah Bowers, who runs the consulting firm that the movement organization hired to build out its philanthropic capacity, said Student Solidarity Fund applicants do not have to prove they are Black. But fund administrators will be working to weed out scammers.

Black people shouldnt have to jump through hoops and jump over hurdles to get the access that they need, he said.

Tahir Murray, an HBCU ambassador for the BLM foundations Student Solidarity Fund, said he hears from Black students all the time that stress over the lack of scholarships and grants is a persistent distraction from their studies.

Black students have disproportionate access to aid and resources that take into account historical discrimination and the experiences of Black people navigating a society that does not see or treat us as equal, said Murray, who is a 2021 graduate of Howard University and owner of the HBCU lifestyle brand LegacyHistoryPride.

The relief fund comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Biden administration can proceed with a plan to broadly cancel student loans. In August, President Joe Biden said the government would forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for Americans with annual incomes below $125,000, and would cancel up to $20,000 for recipients of the Pell Grant.

More than 26 million people had already applied for the relief, with 16 million approved. But the government stopped processing applications in November after a federal judge in Texas struck down the plan. Conservative attorneys and Republican lawmakers are challenging the legality of the debt forgiveness plan on an argument that Biden cannot take this step without congressional approval.

A high court ruling is expected by early summer.

We could sit around and wait, and hope that legislators do what they promised by providing loan relief, or we could step up and do it ourselves. And weve decided to do the latter, Gay said.

Last year, while Americans waited for Congress to approve a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that included direct payments of $1,400 to Americans earning less than $75,000, the BLM foundation gave out $3 million in microgrants of $1,000 to nearly 3,000 Black people.

That initiative launched just as the foundation opened up about the tens of millions in donations it took in after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, a case that helped spark racial justice protests across the U.S. and around the world. Earlier this year, the foundation revealed in a nonprofit tax filing that it had nearly $42 million in net assets at the end of the last fiscal year.

The tax filing also showed the foundation spent nearly $6 million on a Los Angeles-area property that includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms, a swimming pool, a soundstage and office space. The property is intended as a campus for a Black artists fellowship, the foundation said.

The financial revelations set off a fresh wave of criticism from the left and right in the political world and from both inside and outside of the broader BLM movement. Several months after the disclosures, the foundations structure remains the same. It is run by a three-member board of directors, including Gay and Bowers.

In August, a group of local chapters and activists known as BLM Grassroots filed a lawsuit in a California Superior Court against Bowers. The suit alleges that he and his consulting firm broke an agreement to turn over control of the foundations digital assets and its finances to the grassroots organizers of BLM, allowing him to profit personally and professionally from the surge in donations.

Bowers told the AP the allegations are frivolous and untrue. An attorney for the foundation last week filed a court motion asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

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Bankman-Fried is scheduled to make his (likely virtual) homecoming to Washington on Tuesday, where hes said he will testify at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the collapse of his exchange, FTX. After several years of serving as the face of the cryptos regulatory efforts, Bankman-Fried will find a much chillier environment after revelations that he directed customer funds to his trading firm, Alameda Research, losing billions of dollars in the process.

FTXs bankruptcy not only altered the trajectory of crypto but also how lawmakers will approach the industry. Through interviews with 11 current and former congressional staffers, industry leaders, and policy experts, Fortune has learned how the events of the past month have shaped the current thinking on crypto legislation, which is likely to come to the forefront of policy discussions during the next congressional session.

Every good crisis creates an opportunity for us to be able to have clarity on what happened in the pastbut also the need to create stability in the marketplace, said Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director of the blockchain-focused Stellar Development Foundation.

The driving force in Washington 

The crypto industry lacks any meaningful regulation in the U.S., which everyone from Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Rostin Behnam to top crypto lawyers frequently bemoan. The result is a lack of clarity around regulatory oversight, with the biggest question remaining which cryptocurrencies are securities, and under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and which are commodities overseen by the CFTC.  

The past year saw a flurry of activity across different committees in both the House and Senate to propose legislation to solve this fundamental issue, as well as other key questions such as how to regulate centralized exchanges and stablecoins.  

Reports of a turf war between the SEC and CFTC emerged, with the scrappier CFTC fighting for more resources and oversight, while SEC chair Gary Gensler repeated that the current regulatory environment was sufficient, declining to issue clearer rules that the crypto industry clamored for and claiming that nearly every cryptocurrency was a security, with the sole exception of Bitcoin.  

As Congress debated legislation to create guardrails for the industry, Bankman-Fried established himself as a frequent presence in Washington, appearing at congressional hearings and meeting with lawmakers and regulators in the background. As Behnam testified after FTXs collapse, he met with Bankman-Fried 10 times over a special clearinghouse applicationBankman-Fried estimated that he spent tens of thousands of hours with the commission.  

SBFs aim was to not only advocate for his companies applications but to push legislation favorable for the industry. In particular, he helped shape and support a bill out of the Senate Agriculture Committee called the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Actintroduced by Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.)which would have expanded the CFTCs oversight and funding.

The driving force behind the DCCPA was Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, said Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Assocation. 

The CFTCand commodities, which include at least Bitcoin and possibly Etherfalls under the jurisdiction of the Senate Agriculture Committee because of the history of grain markets. The DCCPA intentionally narrowed its scope to CFTCs role in regulating crypto, with the idea that it would be easier to shepherd a bill that fell under the jurisdiction of one committee, rather than introducing a sprawling piece of financial legislation like Dodd-Frank. 

Brett Quick, head of government affairs for the trade association Crypto Council for Innovation, said that of all potential crypto legislation, the DCCPA had the most momentum and broadest support, although she said passing it by the end of the year was always going to be a heavy lift.  

The events of November, and the bills association with Bankman-Fried, have hurt its chances. The Senate Agriculture Committee was the first to hold an FTX hearing, with committee members emphasizing the need to re-examine the entire bill. Meanwhile, regulators and lawmakers publicly criticized it, with Gensler describing it as too light-touch. 

The chance of the bill passing before the end of the year has essentially evaporated, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, although its expected to be introduced again next year with updated text and potentially merged with similar legislation.

Lummis-Gillibrand and stablecoins 

While the DCCPA looked most likely to pass, other proposals jockeyed for position. One of the most prominent was the Responsible Financial Innovation Act sponsored by Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), often referred to as the Lummis-Gillibrand bill.  

The bill was wider in scope than the DCCPA, including more clarifications about the distinctions between the SEC and CFTC, as well as the establishment of an Advisory Committee on Financial Innovation, which would include industry leaders, policy experts, and regulators. 

It can be challenging to move a bill of that magnitude and size by itself, said Quick, adding that it likely would be broken into pieces and sent to different committees before reassembled as a broader package. 

One of the biggest unknowns has been the support of two key Democratic senatorsSens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)with both raising doubts on the need for new legislation amid broader skepticism of the industry.  

As one person familiar with the matter told Fortune, the biggest question mark moving forward is whether Brown and Warren are winnable. In the aftermath of FTXs collapse, Brown has called for comprehensive regulation, both during the Senate Agriculture Committee hearing and in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellenactions some have taken to be a pivot in his approach. 

For skeptics like Brown and Warren, the Lummis-Gillibrand bill is a hard sell. Like the DCCPA, it has the perception of being close to the industry, from Lummis and Gillibrand posting it for comment on the developer platform GitHub to Lummis adding Bitcoin laser eyes to her Twitter profile picture. 

Gillibrand is also working with Lummis and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) on a stablecoin bill, with the hope that its added to the omnibus spending bill before the end of the year. In a recent interview with Bankless, Toomey also mentioned two other bipartisan bills that could move by the end of 2022, including a de minimis exception to simplify the use of digital assets for smaller purchases, and a fix to the definition of brokers from the 2021 infrastructure law.  

Stablecoins, the cryptocurrencies pegged to an underlying asset such as the U.S. dollar, have long been viewed by lawmakers as a necessaryand simpleravenue for regulation.  

The draft of a stablecoin bill from the House Financial Services Committee, sponsored by chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and ranking member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), has been floating around all year, although there are still obstacles on key provisions including states regulatory authority.  

With a Friday deadline and a Republican effort to block the omnibus bill, the likelihood of any crypto provisions being attached to a larger vehicle before the end of the year are diminishing. But with the shift of power in the House and McHenry becoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee, stablecoin legislation likely will become a major focus for lawmakers.

The crypto Congress 

The last missing piece of the legislative puzzle is the Digital Commodity Exchange Act, a bill proposed in the House Agriculture Committee thats similar to the DCCPA but untainted by Bankman-Fried. 

According to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, the DCEA will likely be reintroduced during the next Congressional session. Like the House Financial Services Committee, the House Agriculture Committee will beckon in a new chair with a crypto focus, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.). With a recognizable path forward, the DCEA could become one of the leading crypto bills.  

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), a second-term congressman sitting in the House Financial Services Committee, introduced two bills of his own in December to address the failures of FTX, although he will be in the minority next year.  

The next Congressional session likely will include a concentrated push from both sides of the aisle for crypto regulation. Ron Hammond, director of government relations at the Blockchain Association, predicted an aggressive push from House Financial Services after Republicans take over. 

As several people told Fortune, while the collapse of FTX likely stalled bills such as the DCCPA, it also increased the overall appetite for comprehensive legislation. Whether thats to the liking of the crypto industry, especially when it comes to tricky sectors such as decentralized finance, remains to be seen.  

The 118th Congress is really going to be the crypto Congress, said Quick.