• Aug 13, 2024

TON Ventures Launches With $40 Million to Fund Telegram’s Crypto Ecosystem

A group of senior builders of The Open Network (TON), Telegram’s blockchain of choice, announced on Wednesday that they have spun off to create TON Ventures, a for-profit fund equipped with $40 million to support the next generation of on-chain Telegram mini apps.  The fund will be led by Ian Wittkopp, the former head of TON’s accelerator program, and Inal Kardan, the TON Foundation’s former head of gaming. It will focus initially on early-stage projects with investments of $500,000 or less, Wit...

• Aug 13, 2024

Trump Running Mate J.D. Vance Has Held Bitcoin Since 2021

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who last month became former president Donald Trump's running mate, has disclosed that he still holds between $101,000 to $250,000 worth of Bitcoin in his 2023 annual financial disclosure. The Bitcoin disclosure, which Vance notes is held in a Coinbase account, isn't new. The Republican senator also reported holding between $101,000 to $250,000 in BTC on his 2022 annual report and his 2021 candidate disclosure when he was running for his Senate seat. There's a wide discre...

• Aug 13, 2024

South Korean Civil Servant Charged With Embezzling $400,000 to Buy Crypto

A South Korean civil servant has been charged with allegedly embezzling over $400,000 from government funds and using some of it to invest in cryptocurrencies. According to a Yonhap News Agency report, the Cheongju District Prosecutors' Office announced that they had arrested and charged an unnamed grade six civil servant working at Cheongju City Hall. The accused, in their forties, is accused of misappropriating approximately 600 million won (around $438,000) over a seven-year period beginning...

• Aug 13, 2024

Australia Securities Regulator Sues ASX for 'Misleading Statements' on Failed Blockchain Project

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has sued the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the country’s largest exchange, alleging misleading statements regarding its blockchain-based Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) replacement project. ASIC claims that ASX's announcements on February 10, 2022, stating that the project was "on-track for go-live" in April 2023 and "progressing well," were misleading and deceptive. The regulator argues that these statement...

• Aug 13, 2024

Australia Securities Regulator Sues ASX for 'Misleading Statements' on Failed Blockchain Project

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has sued the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the country’s largest exchange, alleging misleading statements regarding its blockchain-based Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) replacement project. ASIC claims that ASX's announcements on February 10, 2022, stating that the project was "on-track for go-live" in April 2023 and "progressing well," were misleading and deceptive. The regulator argues that these statement...

• Aug 13, 2024

Goldman Sachs Reveals $418 Million Bitcoin ETF Holdings in Latest Quarterly Filing

Goldman Sachs has disclosed, for the first time, positions in several Bitcoin-related exchange-traded funds. The disclosure came via the bank’s latest 13F filing for the quarter ending June 30, released after markets closed on Tuesday. The financial services giant reported new holdings in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust valued at $238.6 million, representing 6,991,248 shares, per the filing. Goldman’s Bitcoin position reflects a broader trend within the financial industry, where initial skepti...

• Aug 13, 2024

This Deepfake Tool Turning Images Into Livestreams is Topping the GitHub Charts

Deep-Live-Cam, a deepfake tool that turns photos into live video streams, has quickly become the most liked repository for developers to download on GitHub. Built primarily in the Python scripting language, Deep-Live-Cam is easy to download and modify, and the highly accessible nature of the Python language means that it can potentially be implemented into applications that will work on phones and other communications devices.  It is yet another reminder of just how rapidly deepfake technology i...

• Aug 13, 2024

Bitcoin Holders Are Stacking Sats as Price Hovers Above $60,000: Glassnode

While the market continues to digest Bitcoin’s descent to $49,000 last week, signs that users are beginning to build up their Bitcoin are emerging, Glassnode said in a blog post on Tuesday. Bitcoin has faced several headwinds in August including geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, recessionary fears in the U.S., uncertainty around the Japanese yen, and a general risk-off mood felt most sharply at the beginning of the month. “Investors remain cautious ahead of US CPI this week,” QCP Capital...

• Aug 13, 2024

Bitcoin Miners Sell Off Bitcoin to Stay Afloat as BTC Price Wavers

The plunge in Bitcoin’s price, combined with a substantial increase in mining difficulty, has Bitcoin miners sweating as they fight to keep their heads above water—with the network’s guardians shifting huge amounts of coins. Figures from blockchain data firm CryptoQuant shows that earlier this month, BTC outflows from miners peaked at 19,000 Bitcoins per day—the highest amount since March. One reason for the rush in sales is that it is harder to mint coins profitably following April’s halving ev...

• Aug 13, 2024

‘AI Scientist’ Aims to Automate Scientific Discovery

Tokyo-based R&D company Sakana AI has released "The AI Scientist," an AI system designed to fully automate scientific research. The company claims this system is the first of its kind, capable of handling multiple aspects of the research process independently. In its research paper, published Monday, the team says its approach “generates novel research ideas, writes code, executes experiments, visualizes results, describes its findings by writing a full scientific paper, and then runs a simulate...