Blockchain data shows that the aforementioned address has moved $1 million worth of Ether to another account and sold multiple NFTs connected to Milady, including NFTx staked ones. According to reports, the founder of Remilia and Milady, Krishna Okhandiar, better known as Charlotte Fang, is alleging that he was the victim of a hack after
Following a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mira Murati evaded questions regarding the source of data for OpenAI’s Sora model. According to Mira Murati, chief technical officer of OpenAI, the company’s next video-generating artificial intelligence model, Sora, has an uncertain data source. In a Wall Street Journal interview that was published on March
Following other large corporations in the past year, Starbucks has decided to discontinue its NFT rewards programme. Starbucks, the global coffee giant, has declared that it will be discontinuing its digital collection stamp programme, which allowed users to purchase non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and earn them. This move was made to make way for new projects.
Loneliness is a quiet plague that looms large as a societal concern worth billions of dollars, but it is rarely addressed or even recognized in Asia’s $10 trillion consumer market.As we drift away in our increasingly digitized lives, our desire for friendship, connection, and love grows stronger. However, the current landscape of digital companionship, which is dominated by static, one-way interactions with chatbots, fails to meet this deep-rooted need for genuine connection, highlighting a significant gap and opportunity for innovation in how we interact with technology to fulfill our most human desires. While gamifying personal connection is not a new concept, traditional “Waifu” games — a term used to describe interactive encounters with digital love partners — are time-consuming to create and are typically bound by platform constraints.In contrast, AI Waifu is a future Web3 game with a circular and player-driven economy that can be accessed as a progressive web application from any browser. The game tries to directly address the age-old issue of loneliness by allowing for virtual relationships in a gamified setting. The game depicts a Digital Bangkok in which the player “lives” alongside their Waifu. It will allow users to interact fully in a shared place using all of their senses. Consider a world of Waifus, which includes celebrities and social media influencers such as Irene Zhao, Sydney Sweeney, and Marin Kitagawa. AI Waifu combines elements of Tamagotchi, anime, cryptocurrency, and AI to allow people to experience different stages of their relationship with their Waifu and participate in a dynamic game about love and mystery.While most AI companions provide repetitious content, AI Waifu enhances gamers’ experiences with hyper-personalized modal inputs and outputs. Each Waifu in the game is a visual 3D model that reacts to speech and text with emotions and animations. Each Waifu has a unique personality, thanks to a level system that switches character cards. The game incorporates meta, financial, and flirt skill-based games that are related to the primary loop.Players will be able to flirt with other Waifus to gain love points and make their own Waifus jealous. The game contains NSFW content for people looking for an adult-oriented experience. AI Waifu is being developed by Virtual Protocol, an artificial intelligence-focused protocol with a treasury of over $18 million.The Web3 game has completed its liquidity bootstrapping pool (LBP) event on the Fjord Foundry platform, raising $6.4 million from more than 1,500 participants, making it one of the fairest LBPs ever held on Fjord. Waifu’s in-game coin, WAI, is set to be generated on March 16 at 12 p.m. UTC, with twin liquidity pools on the Ethereum and Blast networks. LBP is a good technique to fairly develop a new token’s liquidity pool and set its market price.AI Waifu employs LBP to ensure a fair launch for WAI, its in-game token, by removing the typical dump pressure found in traditional VCs and presales. The game is set to premiere in the last week of March. The game tries to differentiate itself from other Blast decentralized applications (DApps) with its gamified AI companion experience. The developer’s plan includes virtual reality (VR) and wearable compatibility to fully immerse all human senses. Following its release, the game will focus on bringing digital Waifus to life through augmented reality and VR with Apple’s Vision Pro headset. AI Waifu intends to use well-known IPs, including collaborations with iconic characters and brands such as Genshin Impact, to increase the game’s appeal and replayability through new challenges, modes, and customization choices.AI Waifu is excited for its live premiere on March 25. The launch will also signal the beginning of WAI powering the in-game economy, laying the door for a thriving ecology. Web3 and artificial intelligence emerge as powerful instruments for combating society’s pervasive loneliness.Technologies like AI Waifu, which enable dynamic, individualized relationships that transcend typical digital borders, provide a look into a future in which virtual companionship satisfies our fundamental craving for connection. With Web3’s decentralized ethos providing equitable access and AI’s developing skills enriching connections, the technical revolution is leading to a societal shift aimed at bridging the loneliness gap through innovation and empathy.
Despite customer dissatisfaction and persistent queries regarding the firm’s plans to provide Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), Vanguard Group CEO Tim Buckley has maintained his strong stance.Buckley warned against adding Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs in retirement investment plans in a recent Vanguard video, citing the asset’s volatility. “We don’t believe it belongs, like a Bitcoin ETF belongs in a long-term portfolio of someone saving for their retirement. It’s a speculative asset.” Buckley also argued that Bitcoin’s utility as a store of money is unclear, noting that Bitcoin suffered a large decrease with the stock market crisis in 2022. “When stocks got hammered in the recent crisis, Bitcoin went right with them. And so it is speculative. Really tough to think about how it belongs in a long-term
A CertiK assessment states that the yield farming app was compromised through a potential private key breach. The Mozaic Finance yield farming protocol was exploited on the Abitrum network on March 15, as the protocol’s development team reported in a statement. According to the team, the hacker has placed all of the stolen money on
The detention of Gambaryan, according to the Chamber of Digital Commerce, is arbitrary, devoid of due process, and poses a serious threat to diplomatic relations and international legal norms. Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to act quickly to facilitate the release of two prominent figures from Binance: Nadeem Anjarwalla, a senior executive at
Digital asset exchanges and custodians now have to pay an application cost of 300,000 naira ($186) instead of the prior 100,000 naira ($62) under the amended requirements. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Nigeria has put out a proposal to revise the regulations governing platforms that provide cryptocurrency services. It suggests raising the registration
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of FTX, was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy charges related to the demise of one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The prosecution asked a federal judge to sentence Bankman-Fried to at least 40 years and up to 50 years in prison. In a sentencing
Blockchain layer 1 based on Cosmos Canto introduced its “Cyclone Stack,” which is designed to increase performance and scale. Additionally, it is going back on its previously declared intention to switch to an Ethereum layer-2 network. Canto, a blockchain for decentralised finance (DeFi) apps, initially declared in September that it will use Polygon’s Chain Development
Self-reported MicroStrategy (MSTR), a bitcoin development company, has priced a $525 million convertible debt offering and plans to add to its 205,000 bitcoin (BTC) stack. The $500 million private placement was increased, and buyers were given the opportunity to purchase up to an additional $78.5 million of the paper, so profits are probably closer to
The emergence of blockchain technology has made safe and decentralised transactions possible. A distributed ledger technology called blockchain is used to securely and transparently record transactions. Due to its safe method of handling data and transactions, its application is quickly growing in a variety of areas, including healthcare and banking. Blockchain transactions are immutable—that is,
Investment bank Stifel (SF) stated in a research study on Wednesday that Galaxy Digital (GLXY) ought to be a core position for equity investors wishing to get exposure to the digital asset ecosystem. Resuming coverage, Stifel maintained a buy rating and a C$20 price objective for Michael Novogratz’s cryptocurrency financial services company. On Thursday, Galaxy
The public was alerted by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) on Friday that cryptocurrency exchange MEXC was operating in the region without a licence. The SFC stated in an email that “where appropriate, the SFC will not hesitate to take enforcement action against unlicensed platforms.” MEXC has previously run afoul of the law.
The cryptocurrency exchange Binance separated its venture capital division, Binance Labs, earlier this year. This was one of the most significant moves made by new CEO Richard Teng, who took over for Changpeng “CZ” Zhao in November, according to a Friday Bloomberg story. A disclaimer on Binance Labs’ website states that the company is “an
Online learning has grown significantly over the last 20 years, with e-learning having the fastest rate of growth in the education sector with an average annual growth rate of 20%. The mobile learning industry is predicted to grow to a value of $80.1 billion globally by 2027, with $18.8 billion expected to be generated in
As of March 14, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has been added to the warning list of Hong Kong’s Securities & Futures Commission (SFC).“The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) today warns the public of an unlicensed virtual asset trading platform (VATP) known as Bybit,” the agency stated, “which offers trading services in crypto-related products in a number of jurisdictions.”Eleven items (Bybit Futures, Bybit Options, Bybit Leveraged Tokens, Dual Assets, Bybit Lending, Bybit Wealth Management, and others) that are provided by the Bybit exchange are included as warnings. “The SFC is concerned that these products have also been offered to Hong Kong investors and wishes to make it clear that no entity in the Bybit group is licensed by or registered with the SFC to conduct any “regulated activity” in Hong Kong,” said the regulator. Presently, before they may be made available to Hong Kong residents, goods connected to cryptocurrencies may be classified as securities or futures contracts and need to be licensed by the SFC.The notice dated March 14 pertains to Bybit.com and its proprietor, Bybit Fintech Limited, who is registered in Seychelles. This is not to be confused with https://www.bybit.com.hk, a related domain that is under the ownership of Spark Fintech Limited and does not now offer cryptocurrency services in Hong Kong.Bybit is presently applying for a virtual asset trading operator license (VATP) in Hong Kong through its subsidiary Spark Fintech Limited, according to a story published by Cointelegraph on February 1.The SFC has granted licenses to only two cryptocurrency exchanges in Hong Kong: HashKey Exchange (licensed on November 9, 2022) and OSL Exchange (licensed on December 15, 2020). The deadline for cryptocurrency exchanges operating in Hong Kong to file a VATP application expired on February 29.Unlicensed businesses must cease operations in the Special Administrative Region by May 31.Similarly, exchanges whose VATP applications have been rejected by the SFC must exit the city within three months.
According to a finding by Judge James Mellor in the United Kingdom on March 14, Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous founder of the Bitcoin network.On March 12, closing arguments began in London in the lawsuit filed by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) against Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has claimed to be Nakamoto since 2016.COPA was seeking injunctive relief to prevent Wright from falsely claiming to be Nakamoto.Wright has been accused of significant document falsification to back up his claim to be the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator.According to COPA’s last submission. “Dr. Wright has been shown to have lied on an extraordinary scale. […] He has invented an entire biographical history, producing one tranche after another of forged documents to support it.” The trial began on Feb. 5. Wright had offered to settle the case out of court on Jan. 24, but COPA declined. The goal of COPA is “to encourage the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and to remove patents as a barrier to growth and innovation.”It has 33 members, including Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, Paradigm, Uniswap, and Worldcoin.In 2023, the Wrights sued 13 Bitcoin Core developers and a number of corporations, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, for copyright violations including the Bitcoin white paper, file format, and database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain.In response to the case, the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund stated.
North Korean hackers affiliated with the infamous Lazarus Group have utilized the coin mixing service Tornado Cash to launder $12 million in ether (ETH) during the last 24 hours.According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, Lazarus Group transmitted over 40 transactions to Tornado Cash on March 13 and 14.Elliptic also blamed the Lazarus Group for a $100 million Heco Bridge and HTX attack in November last year. According to a report by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, Lazarus is responsible for attacks totaling more than $3 billion over the last six years.Tornado Cash faced US sanctions in August 2022.This prompted the Lazarus Group to utilize another mixer, Sinbad, to conceal their ill-gotten gains.However, once Sinbad was taken by US officials in November, Lazarus returned to Tornado Cash, according to Elliptic’s blog post.Roman Storm, one of Tornado Cash’s founders, was arrested last year and is currently facing trial on money laundering accusations.Another, Roman Semenov, has been charged but not detained. Despite being sanctioned twice, Tornado Cash continues to operate via decentralized smart contracts that cannot be confiscated or taken down. “The change in behavior and return to the use of Tornado Cash likely reflects the limited number of large-scale mixers now operating, thanks to law enforcement takedowns of services such as Sinbad.io and Blender.io,” Elliptic said.
Following a recent research note released by the broker on Thursday, Bernstein began covering the trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) with an outperform rating and a $30 price target. The firm attributed the bullish call to a “monster” crypto cycle. According to the research, “we expect total crypto market cap to reach $7.5T by 2025 versus
Following an effort to enhance corporate cross-border payments, Fireblocks, a platform that provides infrastructure for transferring, storing, and issuing digital assets, has teamed up with Zodia Markets, an institutional cryptocurrency exchange based in the United Kingdom. According to the press release, the partnership will enable businesses to move money more quickly by using stablecoins as
The Dutch central bank fined cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com 2.85 million euros ($3.12 million) in October of last year, the regulator revealed on Wednesday. According to the notice, Foris DAX MT Limited (DAX MT), the company that operates Crypto.com, was fined for providing services in the Netherlands without first registering with De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). The
On March 13, at 1:55 PM UTC, the Dencun update was successfully deployed on the Ethereum mainnet.The most anticipated hard fork since the Merge, Dencun is projected to improve Ethereum’s overall scalability and drastically lower layer-2 network transaction fees.According to Arthur Breitman, co-founder of the Tezos blockchain, while the Dencun improvement is a positive move, it won’t completely address the drawbacks of layer-2 solutions.He stated to Cointelegraph. “The Dencun upgrade does the bare minimum to extend the data usable by rollups on Ethereum, which should lower transaction costs in these L2 solutions. This is a step in the right direction, but ultimately, rollups built on top of Ethereum remain very throughput constrained and are forced to adopt extreme centralization measures.” The debut of Dencun occurs about a year after the Shanghai upgrade in April 2023, which allowed users to unstake their Ether for the first time following the Merge and the network’s conversion to a proof-of-stake network.
Apple silicon chip technology will be integrated into the recently created decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) io.net for its machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.In order to support ML and AI computation, Io.net has created a decentralized network based in Solana that sources graphics processing unit (GPU) computing capacity from geographically dispersed data centers, cryptocurrency miners, and decentralized storage providers. The business, which had recently struck a cooperation with Render Network, announced the introduction of its beta platform during the Solana Breakpoint conference in Amsterdam in November 2023.With its most recent update, Io.net claims to be the first cloud service to offer machine learning applications using Apple silicon chip clustering.For ML and AI computing, engineers can cluster Apple chips from any location in the world. As discussed in-depth by Cointelegraph earlier, io.net offers inexpensive GPU processing resources for use in AI and ML applications.The platform makes payments to GPU and central processing unit compute providers easier by utilizing Solana’s blockchain. Tory Green, the chief operational officer of io.net, claims that Solana’s infrastructure is specifically designed to handle the volume of transactions and inferences that io.net will enable.In order to leverage the hardware, the infrastructure gathers GPU processing power in clusters through hundreds of inferences and related microtransactions.Users of io.net can now contribute processing power from a variety of Apple Silicon chips thanks to the update.The M1, M1 Max, M1 Pro, and M1 Ultra; M2, M2 Max, M2 Pro, and M2 Ultra; and M3, M3 Max, and M3 Pro models are all included in this broad range. The 128 megabyte memory architecture of Apple’s M3 chips outperforms the capabilities of Nvidia’s flagship A100-80 GB graphics cards, according to Io.net.Additionally, according to Io.net, Apple’s M3 CPUs have an improved neural engine that powers them 60% quicker than its M1 series. The chips’ unified memory architecture also makes them suitable for model inference, which involves putting real-time data through an AI model to solve problems or provide predictions.The incorporation of Apple chip compatibility, according to Io.net founder Ahmad Shadid, may enable hardware to keep up with the increasing demand for AI and ML processing resources. “This is a massive step forward in democratizing access to powerful computing resources, and paves the way for millions of Apple users to earn rewards for contributing to the AI revolution.” Millions of users of Apple products can now contribute more chips and processing power for AI and ML use cases thanks to the addition of hardware support.
India’s stock market will soon have a quicker trade settlement system in place to better compete with investors’ rising preference for cryptocurrency exchanges.Madhabi Puri Buch, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), declared on March 11 that a T+0 transaction settlement cycle would be implemented by March 28.Trades can choose to use this optional service, which is designed to meet the needs of those seeking same-day settlement.Since 2021, the Indian stock market has been using a T+1 settlement cycle, meaning that every stock trade is resolved the next day.The T + 1 settlement cycle was implemented gradually, just like T + 0. Buch claims that in order for the Indian stock market to compete with cryptocurrencies, a shift to T+0 is necessary.Investors, in her opinion, anticipate quick settlements, and they will go to an area that already provides them if a “well-regulated market cannot compete with the crypto world” in the near future. SEBI claims that T+0 and the rapid settlement cycle will benefit investors by enabling them to get monies and securities instantly. Additionally, same-day settlements will provide the investor more control over their money and assets and remove the possibility of a settlement deficit. A notice of noncompliance was recently issued by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), a division of the Indian Ministry of Finance that collects financial intelligence regarding violations under the nation’s Prevention of Money Laundering Act.On December 28, 2023, Binance, HTX, Kraken, Gate.io, KuCoin, Bitstamp, MEXC Global, Bittrex, and Bitfinex received notifications for operating unlawfully in India.Twelve days were granted to the exchanges to comply with Indian requirements regarding Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering. Even though India has consistently rejected cryptocurrencies, the country is nevertheless implementing blockchain technology in a number of national projects.The nation recently disclosed that it is home to more than eight million official government papers spread across five distinct blockchain systems. Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth, and Ethereum are the three main blockchain systems that India employs to produce its goods.At present, India uses five blockchain products: the certificate chain, document chain, medicine logistics chain, judicial chain, and property chain.
According to numerous local news sources, Thailand’s cabinet on Tuesday approved a tax exemption for cryptocurrency earnings in order to promote fundraising through investment tokens. One source claims that the exemption eliminates the possibility of double taxation by removing the necessity for holders of investment tokens with the 15% capital gains tax withheld
According to a report by the Financial Times on Tuesday, Nigeria has requested that Binance provide details about its top 100 users in the nation as well as the whole transaction history for the last six months. The demand is made as the third week of Binance’s compliance chief and Africa region manager’s incarceration in
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ordered First Trust Advisors and SkyBridge Capital, the hedge fund led by Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House Communications Director under Trump and investor in digital assets, to label their bitcoin (BTC) ETF application as abandoned. In a notification released on Wednesday, the SEC stated that since the
The security of smart contracts is absolutely crucial. Digital assets, sensitive data, and sometimes whole decentralised apps (dApps) can be transferred more easily thanks to these self-executing contracts. The confidence that blockchain systems are built upon can be severely damaged by any flaw or oversight in the smart contract’s design, leading to anything from data
Two of Binance’s senior executives are allegedly still being held in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, even after the company announced last week that it was leaving the country.According to a March 12 Wired story, two executives from Binance, Tigran Gambaryan, a former federal agent from the United States specializing in cryptocurrencies, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, another executive, had been detained in Abuja for two weeks without passports.Since February 26, 2024, Anjarwalla, the regional manager for Africa based in Kenya and Gambaryan, the head of Binance’s criminal investigations team, have been held at a government facility. According to Gambaryan and Anjarwalla’s families, Nigerian prosecutors have not provided information on whether the two face criminal charges. “There’s no definite answer for anything: how he’s doing, what’s going to happen to him, when he’s coming back,” Gambaryan’s wife, Yuki Gambaryan, reportedly said. A spokesperson for Binance confirmed to Cointelegraph that Gambaryan and
