Among rocket launchers, grenades and bullets, Venezuelan authorities also seized an unlikely technology from criminals during a prison raid this week: Bitcoin mining machines. In an operation to crack the South American country’s most powerful organized crime group Wednesday, 11,000 troops were used to raid the Tocorón prison in Aragua state, according to an official government statement. Weapons were found…
The venture capital industry appears to be gearing up for portfolio rebalancing in 2024, with investors positioning themselves to increase exposure to digital assets in the next bull market. Blockchain Capital, for instance, closed two new funds this week, with $580 million in capital to be deployed in crypto gaming and decentralized finance projects. Likewise, SkyBridge Capital, Atlas Merchant Capital…
Crypto exchange Coinbase attempted to acquire FTX Europe twice since it filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, hoping to broaden its derivatives business overseas. The company, however, has decided not to go forward with the deal, Cointelegraph has learned. According to a report from Fortune, Coinbase explored acquiring FTX’s European arm on two occasions, in November last year — following…
A $10 billion investment in OpenAI is not enough for Microsoft. Now the tech giant is unveiling more artificial intelligence capabilities across its consumer products, aiming to be at the forefront of the AI wave. At its global autumn event Thursday, Microsoft announced that its brand new digital assistant Copilot will soon arrive to replace the depreciated Cortana, and will…
Architect Financial Technologies, the startup founded by former FTX.US president Brett Harrison, will provide derivatives brokerage services after its Architect Financial Derivatives subsidiary received approval from the National Futures Association (NFA) to operate as an independent introducing broker. The company is eyeing both the cryptocurrency derivatives market and the traditional market, Harrison said. An introducing broker is an NFA member…
To curb the unauthorized use of AI in publishing chatbot-written books claimed to be by human authors on its Kindle platform, e-commerce behemoth Amazon has released new guidelines requiring publishers to disclose the use of AI in content submitted to the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform. The new stipulations require publishers to inform Amazon about AI-generated content, including text, cover…
Game engine maker Unity has substantially revised its controversial Unity Runtime Fee policies announced last week after game developers created an uproar of anger and frustration on social media. In a blog post published Friday, Unity Create President Marc Whitten apologized for not taking more developer feedback into account before establishing the new runtime fee model, which charges developers on…
U.S. Senator and Bitcoin skeptic Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has been charged with bribery after allegedly accepting swaths of gold, cash, and mortgage payments as part of a “corrupt relationship” with three businessmen in his home state. The charges follow years of criticism from the politician targeting cryptocurrencies, which he has accused of enabling a range of criminal activities while empowering…
Google Cloud’s BigQuery service just added 11 blockchains networks to its data warehouse, according to a September 21 blog post. The new networks include Avalanche, Arbitrum, Cronos, Ethereum Görli testnet, Fantom, Near, Optimism, Polkadot, Polygon mainnet, Polygon Mumbai testnet, and Tron. We’re enhancing our #blockchain data offering with 11 new chains in #BigQuery, and we’re also making improvements to our…
On this week’s episode of Macro Markets, Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman discusses the real estate markets, highlighting stagnant mortgage demand, attributed to rising rates. With an average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rate of 7.27%, refinancing and home purchase applications have dropped significantly. Still, Pechman speculates that house prices might rise if inflation continues to grow. While some sellers may be…
