After the New York Times (NYT) published an editorial about bitcoin mining, claiming the industry is harmful to the environment, an organization called Stop the Presses took issue with the Times’ paper usage. Stop the Presses launched a social media campaign against the NYT’s newspaper production. The organization’s website, nytimesup.org, alleges that the company “kills approximately 59 million trees per…
Blockchain data provider Chainstack has launched a hosted service for collections of Web3 data known as “subgraphs,” according to an April 19 announcement from the company. The service, called “Chainstack Subgraphs,” allows developers to create subgraphs and post them for a fee. We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Chainstack Subgraphs, an enterprise-level data indexing solution built for ultra-fast access…
Russia is taking further steps to mitigate global sanctions in place since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to local media reports, the country’s central bank plans to create new institutions to mine crypto assets and settle international payments. In a meeting in the State Duma — one of the chambers of the Russian parliament — the head of…
Storied auction house Sotheby’s announced Wednesday that it will facilitate the sale of an art collection called “Grails,” which is comprised of digital artwork that belongs to the now-defunct hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) and its Starry Night Capital NFT-collecting fund. The auction house signaled that NFT artwork included in “Grails” would be offered via auctions, private sales, and…
United States lawmakers discussed the role of stablecoins in a committee hearing, but some experts expressed concern about the country’s regulatory environment. In an April 19 hearing of the U.S. Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion, Austin Campbell, an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia Business School, said areas including Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and the United Kingdom have…
An AI-generated song emulating the vocal style of Drake and The Weeknd has stirred up a new copyright debate across the music industry. The track “Heart On My Sleeve,” created by TikTok creator Ghostwriter977, went viral with 275,000 YouTube plays and 625,000 Spotify plays before being removed. The artists’ record label, Republic Records’ parent company Universal Music Group (UMG), demanded…
In a court case linked to the now-defunct crypto exchange Gatecoin, a Hong Kong judge has ruled that cryptocurrencies are “property” which is “capable of being held on trust.” According to the law firm Hogan Lovells, this case should provide greater clarity to insolvency practitioners and other common law jurisdictions. Hong Kong Judge Designates Crypto Assets as ‘Property’ That Can…
An analytical paper released by the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has given the digital euro a mixed review. The title of the paper summed up its position: “Digital Euro: When in doubt, abstain (but be prepared).” The paper was written at the request of the parliamentary committee by economist Ignazio Angeloni to assess the preparations for…
The large language model sector continues to swell as StabilityAI, maker of the popular image-generation tool Stable Diffusion, has launched a suite of open-source language model tools. Dubbed, StableLM, the publicly-available alpha versions of the suite currently contain models featuring three and seven billion parameters with 15, 30, and 65-billion parameter models noted as “in progress” and a 175-billion model…
In this week’s newsletter, read about how Mastercard launched an accelerator program for musicians powered by nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and how online safety groups urged Meta to refrain from allowing minors into its new metaverse. Check out what happens to NFTs when a collector dies, and, in other news, find out how publishers are looking for alternatives to play-to-earn gaming.…
